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BATTLEGROUND ADVENTURES. Illustrated. 
A BOOK OF FAIRY-TALE FOXES. Illustrated. 
A BOOK OF FAIRY-TALE BEARS. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



CANOEING IN THE 
WILDERNESS 




The Indian Guide's Evening fruyer (page 59) 



CANOEING IN THE 
WILDERNESS 

By henry D. THOREAU 

EDITED BY 
CLIFTON JOHNSON 

ILLUSTRATED BY 
WILL HAMMELL 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 



rz7 



COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
COPYRIGHT, I916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published April iqib 




iCI.A4289G4 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Indian Guide's Evening Prayer . . Frontispiece k 
The Stage on the Road to Moosehead Lake . . 8 ^ 
Making a Camp in the Streamside Woodland . .52 

Fishing 72 

The Red Squirrel ' 88 '^ 

Coming down the Rapids 132 

Shooting the Moose 154 

Carrying ROUND the Falls i8o 



INTRODUCTION 

THOREAU was born at Concord, 
Massachusetts, July 12, 18 17, and at 
the time he made this wilderness canoe 
trip he was forty years old. The record of 
the journey is the latter half of his The 
Maine Woods^ which is perhaps the finest 
idyl of the forest ever written. It is par- 
ticularly charming in its blending of medi- 
tative and poetic fancies with the minute 
description of the voyager's experiences. 

The chief attraction that inspired Tho- 
reau to make the trip was the primitive- 
ness of the region. Here was a vast tract 
of almost virgin woodland, peopled only 
with a few loggers and pioneer farmers, 
Indians, and wild animals. No one could 
have been better fitted than Thoreau to 
enjoy such a region and to transmit his en- 
joyment of it to others. For though he 
was a person of culture and refinement. 



viii INTRODUCTION 

with a college education, and had for an 
intimate friend so rare a man as Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, he was half wild in 
many of his tastes and impatient of the 
restraints and artificiality of the ordinary 
social life of the towns and cities. 

He liked especially the companionship 
of men who were in close contact with 
nature, and in this book we find him deeply 
interested in his Indian guide and linger- 
ing fondly over the man's characteristics 
and casual remarks. The Indian retained 
many of his aboriginal instincts and ways, 
though his tribe was in most respects 
civilized. His home was in an Indian vil- 
lage on an island in the Penobscot River at 
Oldtown, a few miles above Bangor. 

Thoreau was one of the world's greatest 
nature writers, and as the years pass, his 
fame steadily increases. He was a careful 
and accurate observer, more at home in the 
fields and woods than in village and town, 
and with a gift of piquant originality 
in recording his impressions. The play of 



INTRODUCTION ix 

his imagination is keen and nimble, yet 
his fancy is so well balanced by his native 
common sense that it does not run away 
with him. There is never any doubt about 
his genuineness, or that what he states is 
free from bias and romantic exaggeration. 

It is to be noted that he was no hunter. 
His inquisitiveness into the ways of the 
wild creatures carried with it no desire 
to shoot them, and to his mind the 
killing of game for mere sport was akin 
to butchery. The kindly and sympathetic 
spirit constantly manifest in his pages is 
very attractive, and the fellowship one 
gains with him through his written words 
is both delightful and wholesome. He 
stimulates not only a love for nature, but a 
love for simple ways of living, and for all 
that is sincere and unaffected in human 
life, wherever found. 

In the present volume various details and 
digressions that are not of interest to most 
readers have been omitted, but except for 
such elimination Thoreau's text has been 



X INTRODUCTION 

retained throughout. It is believed that 
nothing essential has been sacrificed, and 
that the narrative in this form will be found 
lively, informing, and thoroughly enjoy- 
able. 

Clifton Johnson. 

Hadley, Massachusetts. 



CANOEING IN THE 
WILDERNESS 



CANOEING IN THE 
WILDERNESS 



MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY 
JULY 20-23, 1857 

I STARTED on my third excursion to 
the Maine woods Monday, July 20, 
1857, with one companion, arriving at 
Bangor the next day at noon. The suc- 
ceeding morning, a relative of mine who 
is well acquainted with the Penobscot In- 
dians took me in his wagon to Oldtown 
to assist me in obtaining an Indian for this 
expedition. We were ferried across to the 
Indian Island in a bateau. The ferryman's 
boy had the key to it, but the father, who 
was a blacksmith, after a little hesitation, 
cut the chain with a cold chisel on the 
rock. He told me that the Indians were 
nearly all gone to the seaboard and to Mas- 
sachusetts, partly on account of the small- 



4 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

pox, of which they are very much afraid, 
having broken out in Oldtown. The old 
chief Neptune, however, was there still. 

The first man we saw on the island was 
an Indian named Joseph Polls, whom my 
relative addressed familiarly as "Joe." He 
was dressing a deerskin in his yard. The 
skin was spread over a slanting log, and 
he was scraping it with a stick held by both 
hands. He was stoutly built, perhaps a little 
above the middle height, with a broad face, 
and, as others said, perfect Indian features 
and complexion. His house was a two- 
story white one with blinds, the best-look- 
ing that I noticed there, and as good as 
an average one on a New England village 
street. It was surrounded by a garden and 
fruit trees, single cornstalks standing thinly 
amid the beans. We asked him if he knew 
any good Indian who would like to go into 
the woods with us, that is, to the Allegash 
Lakes by way of Moosehead, and return by 
the East Branch of the Penobscot. 

To which he answered out of that 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 5 

strange remoteness in which the Indian 
ever dwells to the white man, " Me like to 
go myself; me want to get some moose"; 
and kept on scraping the skin. 

The ferryman had told us that all the 
best Indians were gone except Polis, who 
was one of the aristocracy. He, to be sure, 
would be the best man we could have, but 
if he went at all would want a great price. 
Polis asked at first two dollars a day but 
agreed to go for a dollar and a half, and 
fifty cents a week for his canoe. He would 
come to Bangor with his canoe by the 
seven o'clock train that evening — we 
might depend on him. We thought our- 
selves lucky to secure the services of this 
man, who was known to be particularly 
steady and trustworthy. 

I spent the afternoon with my com- 
panion, who had remained in Bangor, 
in preparing for our expedition, purchas- 
ing provisions, hard-bread,' pork, coffee, 

' Hard-bread or ship-bread is a kind of hard biscuit com- 
monly baked in large cakes and much used by sailors and soldiers. 



6 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

sugar, etc., and some india-rubber cloth- 
ing. 

At evening the Indian arrived in the 
cars, and I led the way, while he followed 
me, three quarters of a mile to my friend's 
house, with the canoe on his head. I did 
not know the exact route, but steered by 
the lay of the land, as I do in Boston. I 
tried to enter into conversation with him, 
but as he was puffing under the weight of 
his canoe, not having the usual apparatus 
for carrying it, but, above all, as he was an 
Indian, I-might as well have been thump- 
ing on the bottom of his birch the while. 
In answer to the various observations that 
I made he only grunted vaguely from be- 
neath his canoe once or twice, so that I 
knew he was there. 

Early the next morning the stage called 
for us. My companion and I had each a 
large knapsack as full as it would hold, and 
we had two large rubber bags which held 
our provisions and utensils. As for the In- 
dian, all the baggage he had, beside his axe 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 7 

and gun, was a blanket, which he brought 
loose in his hand. However, he had laid in 
a store of tobacco and a new pipe for the 
excursion. The canoe was securely lashed 
diagonally across the top of the stage, with 
bits of carpet tucked under the edge to pre- 
vent its chafing. The driver appeared as 
much accustomed to carrying canoes in 
this way as bandboxes. 

At the Bangor House we took in four 
men bound on a hunting excursion, one of 
the men going as cook. They had a dog, 
a middling-sized brindled cur, which ran 
by the side of the stage, his master show- 
ing his head and whistling from time to 
time. But after we had gone about three 
miles the dog was suddenly missing, and 
two of the party went back for him, while 
the stage, which was full of passengers, 
waited. At length one man came back, 
while the other kept on. This whole party 
of hunters declared their intention to stop 
till the dog was found, but the very oblig- 
ing driver was ready to wait a spell longer. 



8 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

He was evidently unwilling to lose so many 
passengers, who would have taken a private 
conveyance, or perhaps the other line of 
stages, the next day. Such progress did we 
make, with a journey of over sixty miles to 
be accomplished that day, and a rainstorm 
just setting in. We discussed the subject 
of dogs and their instincts till it was 
threadbare, while we waited there, and the 
scenery of the suburbs of Bangor is still 
distinctly impressed on my memory. 

After full half an hour the man re- 
turned, leading the dog by a rope. He 
had overtaken him just as he was entering 
the Bangor House. He was then tied on 
the top of the stage, but, being wet and 
cold, several times in the course of the 
journey he jumped off, and I saw him 
dangling by his neck. This dog was de- 
pended on to stop bears. He had already 
stopped one somewhere in New Hamp- 
shire, and I can testify that he stopped 
a stage in Maine. This party of four 
probably paid nothing for the dog's ride. 





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7%? Stage on the Road to Moosehead Luke 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 9 

nor for his run, while our party of three 
paid two dollars — and were charged four 
— for the light canoe which lay still on 
the top. 

The stage was crowded all the way. If 
you had looked inside you would have 
thought that we were prepared to run the 
gantlet of a band of robbers, for there 
were four or five guns on the front seat 
and one or two on the back one, each 
man holding his darling in his arms. It 
appeared that this party of hunters was 
going our way, but much farther. Their 
leader was a handsome man about thirty 
years old, of good height, but not appar- 
ently robust, of gentlemanly address and 
faultless toilet. He had a fair white com- 
plexion as if he had always lived in the 
shade, and an intellectual face, and with 
his quiet manners might have passed for 
a divinity student who had seen something 
of the world. I was surprised to find that 
he was probably the chief white hunter 
of Maine and was known all along the 



lo CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

road. I afterwards heard him spoken of 
as one who could endure a great deal of 
exposure and fatigue without showing the 
effect of it; and he could not only use 
guns, but make them, being himself a 
gunsmith. In the spring he had saved a 
stage-driver and two passengers from 
drowning in the backwater of the Piscat- 
aquis on this road, having swum ashore in 
the freezing water and made a raft and 
got them off — though the horses were 
drowned — at great risk to himself, while 
the only other man who could swim 
withdrew to the nearest house to prevent 
freezing. He knew our man, and remarked 
that we had a good Indian there, a good 
hunter; adding that he was said to be 
worth six thousand dollars. The Indian 
also knew him, and said to me, "The 
great hunter." 

The Indian sat on the front seat with 
a stolid expression of face as if barely 
awake to what was going on. Again I 
was struck by the peculiar vagueness of 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH ii 

his replies when addressed in the stage or 
at the taverns. He really never said any- 
thing on such occasions. He was merely 
stirred up like a wild beast, and passively 
muttered some insignificant response. His 
answer, in such cases, was vague as a puff of 
smoke, suggesting no responsibility ^ and if 
you considered it you would find that you 
had got nothing out of him. This was 
instead of the conventional palaver and 
smartness of the white man, and equally 
profitable. Most get no more than this out 
of the Indian, and pronounce him stolid 
accordingly. I was surprised to see what a 
foolish and impertinent style a Maine man, 
a passenger, used in addressing him, as if 
he were a child, which only made his 
eyes glisten a little. A tipsy Canadian 
asked him at a tavern, in a drawling tone, 
if he smoked, to which he answered with 
an indefinite " Yes." 

" Won't you lend me your pipe a little 
while?" asked the other. 

He replied, looking straight by the 



12 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

man's head, with a face singularly vacant 
to all neighboring interests, " Me got no 
pipe"; yet I had seen him put a new 
one, with a supply of tobacco, into his 
pocket that morning. 

Our little canoe, so neat and strong, 
drew a favorable criticism from all the 
wiseacres among the tavern loungers along 
the road. By the roadside, close to the 
wheels, I noticed a splendid great purple 
fringed orchis which I would fain have 
stopped the stage to pluck, but as this had 
never been known to stop a bear, like the 
cur on the stage, the driver would prob- 
ably have thought it a waste of time. 

When we reached the lake, about half 
past eight in the evening, it was still 
steadily raining, and in that fresh, cool 
atmosphere the hylas were peeping and 
the toads ringing about the lake. It was 
as if the season had revolved backward 
two or three months, or I had arrived at 
the abode of perpetual spring. 

We had expected to go upon the lake 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 13 

at once, and, after paddling up two or 
three miles, to camp on one of its islands, 
but on account of the rain we decided to 
go to one of the taverns for the night. 



II 

FRIDAY, JULY 24 

ABOUT four o'clock the next morn- 
. ing, though it was quite cloudy, ac- 
companied by the landlord to the water's 
edge, in the twilight, we launched our 
canoe from a rock on Moosehead Lake. 
We had a rather small canoe for three 
persons, eighteen and one fourth feet long 
by two feet six and one half inches wide 
in the middle, and one foot deep within. 
I judged that it would weigh not far from 
eighty pounds. The Indian had recently 
made it himself, and its smallness was 
partly compensated for by its newness, as 
well as stanchness and solidity, it being 
made of very thick bark and ribs. Our 
baggage weighed about one hundred and 
sixty-six pounds. The principal part of 
the baggage was, as usual, placed in the 
middle of the broadest part, while we 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 15 

stowed ourselves in the chinks and cran- 
nies that were left before and behind it, 
where there was no room to extend our 
legs, the loose articles being tucked into 
the ends. The canoe was thus as closely 
packed as a market basket. The Indian sat 
on a crossbar in the stern, but we flat on 
the bottom with a splint or chip behind 
our backs to protect them from the cross- 
bar, and one of us commonly paddled 
with the Indian. 

Paddling along the eastern side of the 
lake in the still of the morning, we soon 
saw a few sheldrakes, which the Indian 
called Shecorways, and some peetweets on 
the rocky shore. We also saw and heard 
loons. It was inspiriting to hear the reg- 
ular dip of the paddles, as if they were 
our fins or flippers, and to realize that we 
were at length fairly embarked. 

Having passed the small rocky isles 
within two or three miles of the foot of 
the lake, we had a short consultation re- 
specting our course, and inclined to the 



i6 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

western shore for the sake of its lee; for 
otherwise, if the wind should rise, it would 
be impossible for us to reach Mount Kineo, 
which is about midway up the lake on the 
east side, but at its narrowest part, where 
probably we could recross if we took the 
western side. The wind is the chief obsta- 
cle to crossing the lakes, especially in so 
small a canoe. The Indian remarked sev- 
eral times that he did not like to cross the 
lakes " in littlum canoe," but nevertheless, 
"just as we say, it made no odds to him." 
Moosehead Lake is twelve miles wide 
at the widest place, and thirty miles long 
in a direct line, but longer as it lies. Pad- 
dling near the shore, we frequently heard 
the pe-pe of the olive-sided flycatcher, also 
the wood pewee and the kingfisher. The 
Indian reminding us that he could not 
work without eating, we stopped to break- 
fast on the main shore southwest of Deer 
Island. We took out our bags, and the 
Indian made a fire under a very large 
bleached log, using white pine bark from 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 17 

a stump, though he said that hemlock was 
better, and kindling with canoe birch bark. 
Our table was a large piece of freshly 
peeled birch bark, laid wrong side up, and 
our breakfast consisted of hard-bread, fried 
pork, and strong coffee well sweetened, in 
which we did not miss the milk. 

While we were getting breakfast a brood 
of twelve black dippers,^ half grown, came 
paddling by within three or four rods, not 
at all alarmed ; and they loitered about as 
long as we stayed, now huddled close to- 
gether, now moving off in a long line, very 
cunningly. 

Looking northward from this place it 
appeared as if we were entering a large 
bay, and we did not know whether we 
should be obliged to diverge from our 
course and keep outside a point which we 
saw, or should find a passage between this 
and the mainland. It was misty dog-day 
weather, and we had already penetrated 

^ The name dipper is applied to several species of water- 
birds that are notable for their skill in diving. 



i8 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

a smaller bay of the same kind, and 
knocked the bottom out of it, though we 
had been obliged to pass over a bar be- 
tween an island and the shore, where there 
was but just breadth and depth enough to 
float the canoe, and the Indian had ob- 
served, " Very easy makum bridge here," 
but now it seemed that if we held on we 
should be fairly embayed. Presently, how- 
ever, the mist lifted somewhat and re- 
vealed a break in the shore northward. 
The Indian immediately remarked, " I 
guess you and I go there." 

This was his common expression in- 
stead of saying " we." He never addressed 
us by our names, though curious to know 
how they were spelled and what they 
meant. We called him Polis. He had al- 
ready guessed very accurately at our ages, 
and said that he was forty-eight. 

After breakfast I emptied the melted 
pork that was left into the lake, making 
what the sailors call a "slick," and watch- 
ing to see how much it spread over and 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 19 

smoothed the agitated surface. The Indian 
looked at it a moment and said, " That 
make hard paddlum through ; hold 'em 
canoe. So say old times." 

We hastily reloaded, putting the dishes 
loose in the bows, that they might be at 
hand when wanted, and set out again. 
The western shore, near which we paddled 
along, rose gently to a considerable height 
and was everywhere densely covered with 
the forest, in which was a large propor- 
tion of hard wood to enliven and relieve 
the fir and spruce. 

The Indian said that the lichen which 
we saw hanging from the trees was called 
chorchorque. We asked him the names of 
several birds which we heard this morning. 
The thrush, which was quite common, 
and whose note he imitated, he said was 
called Adelungquamooktum ; but sometimes 
he could not tell the name of some small 
bird which I heard and knew, but he said, 
"I tell all the birds about here; can't tell 
littlum noise, but I see 'em, then I can tell." 



20 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

I observed that I should like to go to 
school to him to learn his language, living 
on the Indian island the while; could not 
that be done? 

"Oh, yer," he replied, "good many do 
so. 

I asked how long he thought it would 
take. He said one week. I told him that 
in this voyage I would tell him all I knew, 
and he should tell me all he knew, to which 
he readily agreed. 

Mount Kineo, which was generally visi- 
ble, though occasionally concealed by is- 
lands or the mainland in front, had a level 
bar of cloud concealing its summit, and all 
the mountain-tops about the lake were 
cut off at the same height. Ducks of vari- 
ous kinds were quite common, and ran 
over the water before us as fast as a horse 
trots. 

The Indian asked the meaning o^ reality ^ 
as near as I could make out the word, which 
he said one of us had used; also oiinterrent, 
that is, intelligent. I observed that he could 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 21 

rarely sound the letter r, but used 1, as also 
r for 1 sometimes; as load iox road, pickelel 
for pickerel, Soog/e Island for Sugar Island. 
He generally added the syllable urn to his 
words, as paddluniy etc. 

On a point on the mainland where we 
landed to stretch our legs and look at the 
vegetation, going inland a few steps, I dis- 
covered a fire still glowing beneath its 
ashes, where somebody had breakfasted, 
and a bed of twigs prepared for the follow- 
ing night. So I knew not only that they 
had just left, but that they designed to re- 
turn, and by the breadth of the bed that 
there was more than one in the party. 
You might have gone within six feet of 
these signs without seeing them. There 
grew the beaked hazel, rue seven feet high, 
and red osier, whose bark the Indian said 
was good to smoke, "tobacco before white 
people came to this country, Indian to- 
bacco." 

The Indian was always very careful in 
approaching the shore, lest he should in- 



22 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

jure his canoe on the rocks, letting it swing 
round slowly sidewise, and was still more 
particular that we should not step into it 
on shore, nor till it floated free, and then 
should step gently lest we should open its 
seams, or make a hole in the bottom. 

After passing Deer Island we saw the 
little steamer from Greenville, far east in 
the middle of the lake. Sometimes we 
could hardly tell her from an island which 
had a few trees on it. Here we were ex- 
posed to the wind from over the whole 
breadth of the lake, and ran a little risk 
of being swamped. While I had my eye 
fixed on the spot where a large fish had 
leaped, we took in a gallon or two of water; 
but we soon reached the shore and took 
the canoe over the bar at Sand-bar Island, 
a few feet wide only, and so saved a con- 
siderable distance. 

We crossed a broad bay and found the 
water quite rough. A very little wind on 
these broad lakes raises a sea which will 
swamp a canoe. Looking off from the 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 23 

shore, the surface may appear to be almost 
smooth a mile distant, or if you see a few 
white crests they appear nearly level with 
the rest of the lake, but when you get out 
so far, you may find quite a sea running, 
and ere long, before you think of it, a wave 
will gently creep up the side of the canoe 
and fill your lap, like a monster deliber- 
ately covering you with its slime before it 
swallows you, or it will strike the canoe 
violently and break into it. The same 
thing may happen when the wind rises 
suddenly, though it were perfectly calm 
and smooth there a few minutes before; so 
that nothing can save you, unless you can 
swim ashore, for it is impossible to get 
into a canoe when it is upset. Since you 
sit flat on the bottom, though the danger 
should not be imminent, a little water is 
a great inconvenience, not to mention the 
wetting of your provisions. We rarely 
crossed even a bay directly, from point to 
point, when there was wind, but made a 
slight curve corresponding somewhat to the 



24 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

shore, that we might the sooner reach it 
if the wind increased. 

When the wind is aft, and not too strong, 
the Indian makes a spritsail of his blanket. 
He thus easily skims over the whole length 
of this lake in a dav. 

The Indian paddled on one side, and 
one of us on the other, to keep the canoe 
steady, and when he wanted to change 
hands he would say, "T'other side." He 
asserted, in answer to our questions, that he 
had never upset a canoe himself, though 
he may have been upset by others. 

Think of our little eggshell of a canoe 
tossing across that great lake, a mere black 
speck to the eagle soaring above it! 

My companion trailed for trout as we 
paddled along, but, the Indian warning him 
that a big fish might upset us, for there are 
some very large ones there, he agreed to 
pass the line quickly to the stern if he had 
a bite. 

While we were crossing this bay, where 
Mount Kineo rose dark before us within 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 25 

two or three miles, the Indian repeated 
the tradition respecting this mountain's 
having anciently been a cow moose — how 
a mighty Indian hunter succeeded in kill- 
ing this queen of the moose tribe with 
great difficulty, while her calf was killed 
somewhere among the islands in Penob- 
scot Bay, and, to his eyes, this mountain 
had still the form of the moose in a reclin- 
ing posture. He told this at some length 
and with apparent good faith, and asked 
us how we supposed the hunter could have 
killed such a mighty moose as that. An 
Indian tells such a story as if he thought 
it deserved to have a good deal said about 
it, only he has not got it to say, and so he 
makes up for the deficiency by a drawling 
tone, long-windedness, and a dumb won- 
der which he hopes will be contagious. 

We approached the land again through 
pretty rough water, and then steered di- 
rectly across the lake at its narrowest part 
to the eastern side, and were soon partly 
under the lee of the mountain, having 



26 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

paddled about twenty miles. It was now 
about noon. 

We designed to stop there that afternoon 
and night, and spent half an hour looking 
along the shore northward for a suitable 
place to camp. At length, by going half 
a dozen rods into the dense spruce and fir 
wood on the side of the mountain almost 
as dark as a cellar, we found a place suf- 
ficiently clear and level to lie down on, 
after cutting away a few bushes. The In- 
dian cleared a path to it from the shore 
with his axe, and we then carried up all our 
baggage, pitched our tent, and made our 
bed, in order to be ready for foul weather, 
which then threatened us, and for the night. 
He gathered a large armful of fir twigs, 
breaking them off, which he said were the 
best for our bed, partly, I thought, because 
they were the largest and could be most 
rapidly collected. It had been raining more 
or less for four or five days, and the wood 
was even damper than usual, but he got 
dry bark from the under side of a dead 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 27 

leaning hemlock, which he said he could 
always do. 

This noon his mind was occupied with 
a law question, and I referred him to my 
companion, who was a lawyer. It appeared 
that he had been buying land lately — I 
think it was a hundred acres — but there was 
probably an incumbrance to it, somebody 
else claiming to have bought some grass on 
it for this year. He wished to know to 
whom the grass belonged, and was told 
that if the other man could prove that he 
bought the grass before he. Polls, bought 
the land, the former could take it whether 
the latter knew it or not. To which he 
only answered, " Strange ! " He went over 
this several times, fairly sat down to it, 
with his back to a tree, as if he meant to 
confine us to this topic henceforth ; but as 
he made no headway, only reached the 
jumping-off place of his wonder at white 
men's institutions after each explanation, 
we let the subject die. 

He said that he had fifty acres of grass. 



28 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

potatoes, etc., somewhere above Oldtown, 
besides some about his house; that he hired 
a good deal of his work, hoeing, etc., and 
preferred white men to Indians because 
" they keep steady and know how." 

After dinner we returned southward 
along the shore, in the canoe, on account 
of the difficulty of climbing over the rocks 
and fallen trees, and began to ascend the 
mountain along the edge of the precipice. 
But, a smart shower coming up just then, 
the Indian crept under his canoe, while 
we, protected by our rubber coats, pro- 
ceeded to botanize. So we sent him back 
to the camp for shelter, agreeing that he 
should come for us with his canoe toward 
night. It had rained a little in the fore- 
noon, and we trusted that this would be 
the clearing-up shower, which it proved; 
but our feet and legs were thoroughly wet 
by the bushes. The clouds breaking away 
a little, we had a glorious wild view, as we 
ascended, of the broad lake with its nu- 
merous forest-clad islands extending be- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 29 

yond our sight both north and south, and 
the boundless forest undulating away from 
its shores on every side, as densely packed 
as a rye-field and enveloping nameless 
mountains in succession. It was a perfect 
lake of the woods. 

Looking southward, the heavens were 
completely overcast, the mountains capped 
with clouds, and the lake generally wore 
a dark and stormy appearance, but from 
its surface six or eight miles distant there 
was reflected upward through the misty 
air a bright blue tinge from the unseen 
sky of another latitude beyond. They prob- 
ably had a clear sky then at the south end 
of the lake. 

Again we mistook a little rocky islet 
seen through the "drisk," with some taller 
bare trunks or stumps on it, for the 
steamer with its smoke-pipes, but as it 
had not changed its position after half an 
hour we were undeceived. So much do the 
works of man resemble the works of na- 
ture. A moose might mistake a steamer 



30 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

for a floating isle, and not be scared till 
he heard its puffing or its whistle. 

If I wished to see a mountain or other 
scenery under the most favorable auspices, 
I would go to it in foul weather so as to 
be there when it cleared up. We are then 
in the most suitable mood, and nature is 
most fresh and inspiring. There is no seren- 
ity so fair as that which is just established 
in a tearful eye. 

Jackson, in his " Report on the Geology 
of Maine," says : " Hornstone, which will 
answer for flints, occurs in various parts of 
the State. The largest mass of this stone 
known in the world is Mount Kineo, 
upon Moosehead Lake, which appears to 
be entirely composed of it, and rises seven 
hundred feet above the lake level. This 
variety of hornstone I have seen in every 
part of New England in the form of In- 
dian arrow-heads, hatchets, chisels, etc., 
which were probably obtained from this 
mountain by the aboriginal inhabitants of 
the country." 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 31 

I have myself found hundreds of arrow- 
heads made of the same material. It is 
generally slate-colored, with white specks, 
becoming a uniform white where exposed 
to the light and air. I picked up a small 
thin piece which had so sharp an edge 
that I used it as a knife, and, to see what 
I could do, fairly cut off an aspen one 
inch thick with it, by bending it and 
making many cuts; though I cut my 
fingers badly with the back of it in the 
meanwhile. 

From the summit of the precipice 
which forms the southern and eastern 
sides of this mountain peninsula, five or 
six hundred feet high, we probably might 
have jumped down to the water, or to the 
seemingly dwarfish trees on the narrow 
neck of land which connects it with the 
main. It is a dangerous place to try the 
steadiness of your nerves. 

The plants which attracted our atten- 
tion on this mountain were the moun- 
tain cinquefoil, abundant and in bloom 



32 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

still at the very base by the waterside, 
very beautiful harebells overhanging the 
precipice, bearberry, the Canada blue- 
berry, wild holly, the great round-leafed 
orchis, bunchberry, reddening as we as- 
cended, green at the base of the moun- 
tain, red at the top, and the small fern 
Woodsia ihensh, growing in tufts, now in 
fruit. Having explored the wonders of 
the mountain, and the weather being now 
cleared up, we commenced the descent. 
We met the Indian, puffing and panting, 
about one third of the way up, but think- 
ing that he must be near the top. On 
reaching the canoe we found that he had 
caught a lake trout weighing about three 
pounds, while we were on the mountain. 
When we got to the camp, the canoe 
was taken out and turned over, and a log 
laid across it to prevent its being blown 
away. The Indian cut some large logs of 
damp and rotten wood to smoulder and 
keep fire through the night. The trout 
was fried for supper. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 33 

Our tent was of thin cotton cloth and 
quite small, forming with the ground a 
triangular prism closed at the rear end, 
six feet long, seven wide, and four high, 
so that we could barely sit up in the mid- 
dle. It required two forked stakes, a 
smooth ridgepole, and a dozen or more 
pins to pitch it. It kept off dew and wind 
and an ordinary rain, and answered our 
purpose well enough. We reclined within 
it till bedtime, each with his baggage at 
his head, or else sat about the fire, having 
hung our wet clothes on a pole before 
the fire for the night. 

As we sat there, just before night, look- 
ing out through the dusky wood, the In- 
dian heard a noise which he said was 
made by a snake. He imitated it at my 
request, making a low whistling note — 
pheet — pheet — two or three times re- 
peated, somewhat like the peep of the 
hyla, but not so loud. He said that he 
had never seen them while making it, but 
going to the spot he finds the snake. This, 



34 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

he said, was a sign of rain. When I had 
selected this place for our camp he had 
remarked that there were snakes there. 
" But they won't do any hurt," I said. 

"Oh, no," he answered, "just as you 
say; it makes no difference to me." 

He lay on the right side of the tent, 
because, as he said, he was partly deaf in 
one ear, and he wanted to lie with his 
good ear up. As we lay there he inquired 
if I ever heard "Indian sing." I replied 
that I had not often, and asked him if 
he would not favor us with a song. He 
readily assented, and, lying on his back, 
with his blanket wrapped around him, he 
commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet 
musical chant, in his own language, which 
probably was taught his tribe long ago 
by the Catholic missionaries. He trans- 
lated it to us, sentence by sentence, after- 
ward. It proved to be a very simple 
religious exercise or hymn, the burden of 
which was that there was only one God 
who ruled all the world. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 35 

His singing carried me back to the pe- 
riod of the discovery of America, when 
Europeans first encountered the simple 
faith of the Indian. There was, indeed, a 
beautiful simplicity about it; nothing of 
the dark and savage, only the mild and 
infantile. The sentiments of humility and 
reverence chiefly were expressed. 

It was a dense and damp spruce and fir 
wood in which we lay, and, except for our 
fire, perfectly dark ; and when I awoke in 
the night, I either heard an owl from 
deeper in the forest behind us, or a loon 
from a distance over the lake. Getting up 
some time after midnight to collect the 
scattered brands together, while my com- 
panions were sound asleep, I observed, 
partly in the fire, which had ceased to 
blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of 
light, about five inches in its shortest diam- 
eter, six or seven in its longer, and from 
one eighth to one quarter of an inch wide. 
It was fully as bright as the fire, but not 
reddish or scarlet like a coal, but a white 



36 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

and slumbering light, like the glowworm's. 
I saw at once that it must be phosphor- 
escent wood, which I had often heard of, 
but never chanced to see. Putting my fin- 
ger on it, with a little hesitation, I found 
that it was a piece of dead moosewood 
which the Indian had cut off in a slanting 
direction the evening before. 

Using my knife, I discovered that the 
light proceeded from that portion of the 
sapwood immediately under the bark, and 
thus presented a regular ring at the end, 
and when I pared off the bark and cut into 
the sap, it was all aglow along the log. I 
was surprised to find the wood quite hard 
and apparently sound, though probably 
decay had commenced in the sap, and I 
cut out some little triangular chips, and, 
placing them in the hollow of my hand, car- 
ried them into the camp, waked my com- 
panion, and showed them to him. They 
lit up the inside of my hand, revealing the 
lines and wrinkles, and appearing exactly 
like coals of fire raised to a white heat. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 37 

I noticed that part of a decayed stump 
within four or five feet of the fire, an inch 
wide and six inches long, soft and shaking 
wood, shone with equal brightness. 

I neglected to ascertain whether our fire 
had anything to do with this, but the pre- 
vious day's rain and long-continued wet 
weather undoubtedly had. 

I was exceedingly interested by this 
phenomenon. It could hardly have thrilled 
me more if it had taken the form of let- 
ters, or of the human face. I little thought 
that there was such a light shining in the 
darkness of the wilderness for me. 

The next day the Indian told me their 
name for the light — artoosoqu* — and on 
my inquiring concerning the will-o'-the- 
wisp he said that his " folks " sometimes 
saw fires passing along at various heights, 
even as high as the trees, and making a 
noise. I was prepared after this to hear of 
the most startling and unimagined phe- 
nemona witnessed by " his folks," they are 
abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes 



38 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

so unfrequented by white men. Nature 
must have made a thousand revelations to 
them which are still secrets to us. 

I did not regret my not having seen 
this before, since I now saw it under cir- 
cumstances so favorable. I was in just the 
frame of mind to see something wonder- 
ful, and this was a phenomenon adequate 
to my circumstances and expectation, and 
it put me on the alert to see more like it. 
I let science slide, and rejoiced in that 
light as if it had been a fellow creature. 
A scientific explanation, as it is called, would 
have been altogether out of place there. 
That is for pale daylight. Science with its 
retorts would have put me to sleep ; it was 
the opportunity to be ignorant that I im- 
proved. It made a believer of me more 
than before. I believed that the woods 
were not tenantless, but choke-full of hon- 
est spirits as good as myself any day — not 
an empty chamber in which chemistry was 
left to work alone, but an inhabited house. 
It suggested, too, that the same experience 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 39 

always gives birth to the same sort of be- 
lief or religion. One revelation has been 
made to the Indian, another to the white 
man. I have much to learn of the Indian, 
nothing of the missionary. I am not sure 
but all that would tempt me to teach the 
Indian my religion would be his promise 
to teach me his. Long enough I had heard 
of irrelevant things ; now at length I was 
glad to make acquaintance with the light 
that dwells in rotten wood. 

I kept those little chips and wet them 
again the next night, but they emitted no 
light. 



Ill 

SATURDAY, JULY 25 

AT breakfast, the Indian, evidently 
curious to know what would be ex- 
pected of him the next day, asked me how 
I spent the Sunday when at home. I told 
him that I commonly sat in my chamber 
reading, etc., in the forenoon, and went 
to walk in the afternoon. At which he 
shook his head and said, " Er, that is ver' 
bad." 

"How do you spend it?" I asked. 

He said that he did no work, that he 
went to church at Oldtown when he was 
at home ; in short, he did as he had been 
taught by the whites. 

When we were washing the dishes in 
the lakes, many fishes came close up to us 
to get the particles of grease. 

The weather seemed to be more settled 
this morning, and we set out early in order 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 41 

to finish our voyage up the lake before the 
wind arose. Soon after starting, the Indian 
directed our attention to the Northeast 
Carry, which we could plainly see, about 
thirteen miles distant. This carry is a rude 
wooden railroad running north and south 
about two miles, perfectly straight, from 
the lake to the Penobscot through a low 
tract, with a clearing three or four rods 
wide. This opening appeared as a clear 
bright, or light, point in the horizon, rest- 
ing on the edge of the lake. We should 
not have suspected it to be visible if the 
Indian had not drawn our attention to it. 
It was a remarkable kind of light to steer 
for — daylight seen through a vista in the 
forest — but visible as far as an ordinary 
beacon by night. 

We crossed a deep wide bay north of 
Kineo, leaving an island on our left and 
keeping up the eastern side of the lake. 
We then crossed another broad bay, which, 
as we could no longer observe the shore 
particularly, afforded ample time for con- 



42 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

versation. The Indian said that he had got 
his money by hunting, mostly high up the 
West Branch of the Penobscot, and toward 
the head of the St, John. He had hunted 
there from a boy, and knew all about that 
region. His game had been beaver, otter, 
black cat (or fisher), sable, moose, etc. 
Canada lynx were plenty yet in burnt 
grounds. For food in the woods he uses 
partridges, ducks, dried moose meat, hedge- 
hog, etc. Loons, too, were good, only " bile 
'em good." 

Pointing into the bay he said that it 
was the way to various lakes which he 
knew. Only solemn bear-haunted moun- 
tains with their great wooded slopes were 
visible. The Indian said that he had been 
along there several times. I asked him 
how he guided himself in the woods. 

" Oh," said he, " I can tell good many 
ways." 

When I pressed him further he an- 
swered, *' Sometimes I lookum sidehill," 
and he glanced toward a high hill or 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 43 

mountain on the eastern shore; "great 
difference between the north and south; 
see where the sun has shone most. So 
trees — the large limbs bend toward south. 
Sometimes I lookum locks" (rocks). 

I asked what he saw on the rocks, but 
he did not describe anything in particu- 
lar, answering vaguely, in a mysterious or 
drawling tone, " Bare locks on lake shore 
— great difference between north, south, 
east, west side — can tell what the sun has 
shone on." 

"Suppose," said I, "that I should take 
you in a dark night right up here into the 
middle of the woods a hundred miles, set 
you down, and turn you round quickly 
twenty times, could you steer straight to 
Oldtown?" 

" Oh, yer," said he, " have done pretty 
much same thing. I will tell you. Some 
years ago I met an old white hunter at 
Millinocket ; very good hunter. He said 
he could go anywhere in the woods. He 
wanted to hunt with me that day, so we 



44 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

start. We chase a moose all the forenoon, 
round and round, till middle of afternoon, 
when we kill him. Then I said to him, 
*Now you go straight to camp.' 

" He said, * I can't do that. I don't 
know where I am.' 

" * Where you think camp ?' I asked. 

" He pointed so. Then I laugh at him. 
I take the lead and go right off the other 
way, cross our tracks many times, straight 
camp.'' 

"How do you do that?*' asked I. 

" Oh, I can't tell you^ he replied. 
** Great difference between me and white 
man." 

It appeared as if the sources of infor- 
mation were so various that he did not 
give a distinct conscious attention to any 
one, and so could not readily refer to any 
when questioned about it, but he found 
his way very much as an animal does. 
Perhaps what is commonly called instinct 
in the animal in this case is merely a sharp- 
ened and educated sense. Often, when an 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 45 

Indian says, " I don't know," in regard to 
the route he is to take, he does not mean 
what a white man would by those words, 
for his Indian instinct may tell him still 
as much as the most confident white man 
knows. He does not carry things in his 
head, nor remember the route exactly, like 
a white man, but relies on himself at the 
moment. Not having experienced the 
need of the other sort of knowledge — 
all labeled and arranged — he has not 
acquired it. 

The hunter with whom I talked in 
the stage knew some of the resources of 
the Indian. He said that he steered by the 
wind, or by the limbs of the hemlocks, 
which were largest on the south side; also 
sometimes, when he knew that there was a 
lake near, by firing his gun and listening 
to hear the direction and distance of the 
echo from over it. 

As the forenoon advanced the wind in- 
creased. The last bay which we crossed 
before reaching the desolate pier at the 



46 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Northeast Carry, was two or three miles 
over, and the wind was southwesterly. After 
going a third of the way, the waves had 
increased so as occasionally to wash into 
the canoe, and we saw that it was worse 
ahead. At first we might have turned 
about, but were not willing to. It would 
have been of no use to follow the course 
of the shore, for the waves ran still higher 
there on account of the greater sweep the 
wind had. At any rate it would have been 
dangerous now to alter our course, because 
the waves would have struck us at an ad- 
vantage. It will not do to meet them at 
right angles, for then they will wash in 
both sides, but you must take them quar- 
tering. So the Indian stood up in the 
canoe and exerted all his skill and strength 
for a mile or two, while I paddled right 
along in order to give him more steerage- 
way. For more than a mile he did not 
allow a single wave to strike the canoe as 
it would, but turned it quickly from this 
side to that, so that it would always be on 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 47 

or near the crest of a wave when it broke, 
where all its force was spent, and we merely 
settled down with it. At length I jumped 
out onto the end of the pier against which 
the waves were dashing violently, in order 
to lighten the canoe and catch it at the 
landing, which was not much sheltered, 
but just as I jumped we took in two or 
three gallons of water. I remarked to the 
Indian, "You managed that well," to 
which he replied: " Ver' few men do that. 
Great many waves; when I look out for 
one, another come quick." 

While the Indian went to get cedar 
bark, etc., to carry his canoe with, we 
cooked the dinner on the shore in the 
midst of a sprinkling rain. He prepared 
his canoe for carrying in this wise. He 
took a cedar shingle or splint eighteen 
inches long and four or five wide, rounded 
at one end, that the corners might not be 
in the way, and tied it with cedar bark by 
two holes made midway, near the edge on 
each side, to the middle crossbar of the 



48 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

canoe. When the canoe was Hfted upon 
his head bottom up, this shingle, with its 
rounded end uppermost, distributed the 
weight over his shoulders and head, while 
a band of cedar bark, tied to the crossbar 
on each side of the shingle, passed round 
his breast, and another longer one, outside 
of the last, round his forehead ; also a hand 
on each side rail served to steer the canoe 
and keep it from rocking. He thus carried 
it with his shoulders, head, breast, fore- 
head, and both hands, as if the upper part 
of his body were all one hand to clasp and 
hold it. A cedar tree furnished all the gear 
in this case, as it had the woodwork of the 
canoe. One of the paddles rested on the 
crossbars in the bows. I took the canoe 
upon my head and found that I could 
carry it with ease, but I let him carry it, 
not caring to establish a different precedent. 
This shingle remained tied to the crossbar 
throughout the voyage, was always ready 
for the carries, and also served to protect 
the back of one passenger. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 49 

We were obliged to go over this carry 
twice, our load was so great. But the 
carries were an agreeable variety, and we 
improved the opportunity to gather the 
rare plants which we had seen, when we 
returned empty-handed. 

We reached the Penobscot about four 
o'clock, and found there some St. Francis 
Indians encamped on the bank. They were 
making a canoe and drying moose meat. 
Their camp was covered with spruce bark. 
They had a young moose, taken in the 
river a fortnight before, confined in a sort 
of cage of logs piled up cob-fashion, seven 
or eight feet high. It was quite tame, 
about four feet high, and covered with 
moose flies. There was a large quantity of 
cornel, red maple, and also willow and 
aspen boughs, stuck through between the 
logs on all sides, butt ends out, and on their 
leaves it was browsing. It looked at first 
as if it were in a bower rather than a 
pen. 

Our Indian said that he used black spruce 



so CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

roots to sew canoes with, obtaining it from 
high lands or mountains. The St. Francis 
Indians thought that white spruce roots 
might be best. But the former said, "No 
good, break, can't split 'em." 

I told him I thought that I could make 
a canoe, but he expressed great doubt of it ; 
at any rate he thought that my work would 
not be "neat" the first time. 

Having reloaded, we paddled down the 
Penobscot. We saw a splendid yellow lily 
by the shore, which I plucked. It was six 
feet high and had twelve flowers, in two 
whorls, forming a pyramid. We afterward 
saw many more thus tall along this stream, 
and on the East Branch. The Indian said 
that the roots were good for soup, that is, 
to cook with meat, to thicken it, taking 
the place of flour. They get them in the 
fall. I dug some, and found a mass of bulbs 
pretty deep in the earth, two inches in 
diameter, looking, and even tasting, some- 
what like raw green corn on the ear. 

When we had gone about three miles 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 51 

down the Penobscot, we saw through the 
tree-tops a thunder-shower coming up in 
the west, and we looked out a camping- 
place in good season, about five o'clock. 

I will describe the routine of camping. 
We generally told the Indian that we would 
stop at the first suitable place, so that he 
might be on the lookout for it. Having 
observed a clear, hard, and flat beach to 
land on, free from mud, and from stones 
which would injure the canoe, one would 
run up the bank to see if there were open 
and level space enough for the camp be- 
tween the trees, or if it could be easily 
cleared, preferring at the same time a cool 
place, on account of insects. Sometimes 
we paddled a mile or more before finding 
one to our minds, for where the shore 
was suitable the bank would often be too 
steep, or else too low and grassy, and there- 
fore mosquitoey. We then took out the 
baggage and drew up the canoe. The In- 
dian cut a path to the spot we had selected, 
which was usually within two or three 



52 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

rods of the water, and we carried up our 
baggage. 

One, perhaps, takes birch bark, always 
at hand, and dead dry wood, and kindles 
a fire five or six feet in front of where we 
intend to lie. It matters not, commonly, 
on which side this is, because there is little 
or no wind in so dense a wood at that 
season; and then he gets a kettle of water 
from the river, and takes out the pork, 
bread, coffee, etc., from their several pack- 
ages. 

Another, meanwhile, having the axe, cuts 
down the nearest dead rock maple or other 
dry hard wood, collecting several large logs 
to last through the night, also a green stake, 
with a notch or fork to it, which is slanted 
over the fire, perhaps resting on a rock or 
forked stake, to hang the kettle on, and two 
forked stakes and a pole for the tent. 

The third man pitches the tent, cuts a 
dozen or more pins with his knife to fasten 
it down with, and then collects an armful 
or two of fir twigs, arbor-vits, spruce, or 




Making a Camp in the Streamside yVoodland 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 53 

hemlock, whichever is at hand, and makes 
the bed, beginning at either end, and lay- 
ing the twigs wrong side up, in regular 
rows, covering the stub ends of the last 
row ; first, however, filling the hollows, if 
there are any, with coarser material. 

Commonly, by the time the bed is made, 
or within fifteen or twenty minutes, the 
water boils, the pork is fried, and supper 
is ready. We eat this sitting on the ground, 
or a stump, around a large piece of birch 
bark for a table, each holding a dipper in 
one hand and a piece of ship-bread or fried 
pork in the other, frequently making a 
pass with his hand, or thrusting his head 
into the smoke, to avoid the mosquitoes. 

Next, pipes are lit by those who smoke, 
and veils are donned by those who have 
them, and we hastily examine and dry our 
plants, anoint our faces and hands, and go 
to bed. 

Though you have nothing to do but 
see the country, there 's rarely any time to 
spare, hardly enough to examine a plant. 



54 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

before the night or drowsiness is upon 
you. 

Such was the ordinary experience, but 
this evening we had camped earlier on ac- 
count of the rain, and had more time. We 
found that our camp was on an old indis- 
tinct supply-road, running along the river. 
What is called a road there shows no ruts 
or trace of wheels, for they are not used ; 
nor, indeed, of runners, since they are used 
only in the winter when the snow is sev- 
eral feet deep. It is only an indistinct vista 
through the wood, which it takes an ex- 
perienced eye to detect. 

We had no sooner pitched our tent than 
the thunder-shower burst on us, and we 
hastily crept under it, drawing our bags 
after us, curious to see how much of a 
shelter our thin cotton roof was going to 
be in this excursion. Though the violence 
of the rain forced a fine shower through 
the cloth before it was fairly wetted and 
shrunk, with which we were well bedewed, 
we managed to keep pretty dry, only a 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 55 

box of matches having been left out and 
spoiled, and before we were aware of it 
the shower was over, and only the drip- 
ping trees imprisoned us. 

Wishing to see what fishes were in the 
river there, we cast our lines over the wet 
bushes on the shore, but they were repeat- 
edly swept down the swift stream in vain. 
So, leaving the Indian, we took the canoe, 
just before dark, and dropped down the 
river a few rods to fish at the mouth of a 
sluggish brook. We pushed up this a rod 
or two, but were soon driven off by the 
mosquitoes. While there we heard the 
Indian fire his gun twice in rapid succes- 
sion. His object was to clean out and dry 
it after the rain, and he then loaded it with 
ball, being now on ground where he ex- 
pected to meet with large game. This 
sudden loud crashing noise in the still aisles 
of the forest affected me like an insult to 
nature, or ill manners at any rate, as if you 
were to fire a gun in a hall or temple. It 
was not heard far, however, except along 



56 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

the river, the sound being rapidly hushed 
up or absorbed by the damp trees and 
mossy ground. 

The Indian made a little smothered fire 
of damp leaves close to the back of the 
camp, that the smoke might drive through 
and keep out the mosquitoes, but just be- 
fore we fell asleep this suddenly blazed up 
and came near setting fire to the tent. 



IV 

SUNDAY, JULY 26 

THE note of the white-throated spar- \ 
row was the first heard in the morn- 
ing, and with this all the woods rang. 
Though commonly unseen, their simple 
a&y te-te-te, te-te-te^ te-te-te^ so sharp and 
piercing, was as distinct to the ear as the 
passage of a spark of fire shot into the 
darkest of the forest would be to the eye. 
We were commonly aroused by their lively 
strain very early. What a glorious time they 
must have in that wilderness, far from man- 
kind ! 

I told the Indian that we would go to 
church to Chesuncook this morning, some 
fifteen miles. It was settled weather at 
last. A few swallows flitted over the water, 
we heard Maryland yellow-throats along 
the shore, the notes of the chickadee, and. 



58 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

I believe, redstarts. Moose-flies of large 
size pursued us in midstream. 

The Indian thought that we should lie 
by on Sunday. Said he, " We come here 
lookum things, look all round, but come 
Sunday look up all that, and then Monday 
look again." 

He spoke of an Indian of his acquaint- 
ance who had been with some ministers 
to Katahdin and had told him how they 
conducted. This he described in a low and 
solemn voice. "They make a long prayer 
every morning and night, and at every 
meal. Come Sunday, they stop 'em, no go 
at all that day — keep still — preach all 
day — first one, then another, just like 
church. Oh, ver' good men. One day go- 
ing along a river, they came to the body 
of a man in the water, drowned good 
while. They go right ashore — stop there, 
go no farther that day — they have meet- 
ing there, preach and pray just like Sun- 
day. Then they go back and carry the 
body with them. Oh, they ver' good men." 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 59 

I judged from this account that their 
every camp was a camp-meeting, and that 
they wanted an opportunity to preach 
somewhere more than to see Katahdin. 

However, the Indian added, plying the 
paddle all the while, that if we would go 
along he must go with us, he our man, and 
he suppose that if he no takum pay for 
what he do Sunday then ther 's no harm, 
but if he takum pay then wrong. I told 
him that he was stricter than white men. 
Nevertheless, I noticed that he did not 
forget to reckon in the Sundays at last. 

He appeared to be a very religious man, 
and said his prayers in a loud voice, in In- 
dian, kneeling before the camp, morning 
and evening — sometimes scrambling up 
in haste when he had forgotten this, and 
saying them with great rapidity. In the 
course of the day he remarked, "Poor 
man rememberum God more than rich." 

We soon passed the island where I had 
camped four years before. The deadwater, 
a mile or two below it, the Indian said 



6o CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

was "a great place for moose." We saw 
the grass bent where a moose came out 
the night before, and the Indian said that 
he could smell one as far as he could see 
him, but he added that if he should see 
five or six to-day close by canoe he no 
shoot 'em. Accordingly, as he was the 
only one of the party who had a gun, or 
had come a-hunting, the moose were safe. 

Just below this a cat owl flew heavily 
over the stream, and he, asking if I knew 
what it was, imitated very well the com- 
mon hoo, boo, hoo, hoorer, hoo, of our woods. 

We carried a part of the baggage about 
Pine Stream Falls, while the Indian went 
down in the canoe. A Bangor merchant 
had told us that two men in his employ 
were drowned some time ago while pass- 
ing these falls in a bateau, and a third clung 
to a rock all night and was taken off in the 
morning. There were magnificent great 
purple fringed orchises on this carry and 
the neighboring shores. I measured the 
largest canoe birch which I saw in this 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 6i 

journey near the end of the carry. It was 
fourteen and one half feet in circumfer- 
ence at two feet from the ground, but at 
five feet divided into three parts. The In- 
dian cut a small woody knob as big as a 
filbert from the trunk of a fir, apparently 
an old balsam vesicle filled with wood, 
which he said was good medicine. 

After we had embarked and gone half 
a mile, my companion remembered that 
he had left his knife, and we paddled back 
to get it, against the strong and swift cur- 
rent. This taught us the difference be- 
tween going up and down the stream, for 
while we were working our way back a 
quarter of a mile, we should have gone 
down a mile and half at least. So we 
landed, and while he and the Indian were 
gone back for it, I watched the motions 
of the foam, a kind of white waterfowl 
near the shore, forty or fifty rods below. 
It alternately appeared and disappeared 
behind the rock, being carried round by 
an eddy. 



62 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Immediately below these falls was the 
Chesuncook Deadwater, caused by the 
flowing back of the lake. As we paddled 
slowly over this, the Indian told us a story 
of his hunting thereabouts, and something 
more interesting about himself. It ap- 
peared that he had represented his tribe 
at Augusta, and once at Washington. He 
had a great idea of education, and would 
occasionally break out into such expressions 
as this, " Kademy — good thing — I sup- 
pose they usum Fifth Reader there. You 
been college?" 

We steered across the northwest end of 
the lake. It is an agreeable change to cross 
a lake after you have been shut up in the 
woods, not only on account of the greater 
expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one 
of the surprises which Nature has in store 
for the traveler in the forest. To look down, 
in this case, over eighteen miles of water 
was liberating and civilizing even. The 
lakes also reveal the mountains, and give 
ample scope and range to our thought. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 63 

Already there were half a dozen log huts 
about this end of the lake, though so far 
from a road. In these woods the earliest 
settlements are clustering about the lakes, 
partly, I think, for the sake of the neigh- 
borhood as the oldest clearings. Water is 
a pioneer which the settler follows, taking 
advantage of its improvements. 

About noon we turned northward up a 
broad kind of estuary, and at its northeast 
corner found the Caucomgomoc River, 
and after going about a mile from the lake 
reached the Umbazookskus. Our course 
was up the Umbazookskus, but as the In- 
dian knew of a good camping-place, that 
is, a cool place where there were few mos- 
quitoes, about half a mile farther up the 
Caucomgomoc, we went thither. So 
quickly we changed the civilizing sky of 
Chesuncook for the dark wood of the 
Caucomgomoc. On reaching the Indian's 
camping-ground on the south side, where 
the bank was about a dozen feet high, I 
read on the trunk of a fir tree blazed by 



64 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

an axe an inscription in charcoal which had 
been left by him. It was surmounted by a 
drawing of a bear paddling a canoe, which 
he said was the sign used by his family 
always. The drawing, though rude, could 
not be mistaken for anything but a bear, 
and he doubted my ability to copy it. 
The inscription ran thus. I interline the 
English of his Indian as he gave it to 
me. 

(The figure of a bear in a boat.) 
July 26 

1853 



ntasoseb 
We alone Joseph 
PoHs elioi 
Polls start 
sia olta 
for Oldtown 
onke ni 
right away 
quambi 



July 15 

1855 

niasoseb 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 65 
He added now below: — 

1857 

July 26 
Jo. Polls 

This was one of his homes. I saw 
where he had sometimes stretched his 
moose-hides on the sunny north side of the 
river where there was a narrow meadow. 

After we had selected a place for our 
camp, and kindled our fire, almost exactly 
on the site of the Indian's last camp here, 
he, looking up, observed, " That tree 
danger." 

It was a dead part, more than a foot in 
diameter, of a large canoe birch, which 
branched at the ground. This branch, 
rising thirty feet or more, slanted directly 
over the spot which we had chosen for 
our bed. I told him to try it with his axe, 
but he could not shake it perceptibly, and, 
therefore, seemed inclined to disregard it, 
and my companion expressed his willing- 
ness to run the risk. But it seemed to me 
that we should be fools to lie under it, for 



66 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

though the lower part was firm, the top, 
for aught we knew, might be just ready 
to fall, and we should at any rate be very 
uneasy if the wind arose in the night. It 
is a common accident for men camping 
in the woods to be killed by a falling tree. 
So the camp was moved to the other side 
of the fire. 

The Indian said that the Umbazooks- 
kus, being a dead stream with broad mead- 
ows, was a good place for moose, and he 
frequently came a-hunting here, being 
out alone three weeks or more from Old- 
town. He sometimes, also, went a-hunt- 
ing to the Seboois Lakes, taking the stage, 
with his gun and ammunition, axe and 
blankets, hard-bread and pork, perhaps for 
a hundred miles of the way, and jumped 
ofFat the wildest place on the road, where 
he was at once at home, and every rod 
was a tavern-site for him. Then, after a 
short journey through the woods, he would 
build a spruce-bark canoe in one day, put- 
ting but few ribs into it, that it might be 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 67 

light, and, after doing his hunting with it 
on the lakes, would return with his furs 
the same way he had come. Thus you 
have an Indian availing himself of the 
advantages of civilization, without losing 
any of his woodcraft, but proving himself 
the more successful hunter for it. 

This man was very clever and quick to 
learn anything in his line. Our tent was 
of a kind new to him, but when he had 
once seen it pitched it was surprising how 
quickly he would find and prepare the 
pole and forked stakes to pitch it with, 
cutting and placing them right the first 
time, though I am sure that the majority 
of white men would have blundered sev- 
eral times. 

Now I thought I would observe how 
he spent his Sunday. While I and my 
companion were looking about at the trees 
and river he went to sleep. Indeed, he 
improved every opportunity to get a nap, 
whatever the day. 

Rambling about the woods at this 



68 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

camp, I noticed that they consisted chiefly 
of firs, spruce, red maple, birch, and, 
along the river, the hoary alder. I could 
trace the outlines of large birches that had 
fallen long ago, collapsed and rotted and 
turned to soil, by faint yellowish-green 
lines of featherlike moss, eighteen inches 
wide and twenty or thirty feet long, 
crossed by other similar lines. 

Wild as it was, it was hard for me to 
get rid of the associations of the settle- 
ments. Any steady and monotonous sound, 
to which I did not distinctly attend, passed 
for a sound of human industry. The water- 
falls which I heard were not without their 
dams and mills to my imagination ; and 
several times I found that I had been re- 
garding the steady rushing sound of the 
wind from over the woods beyond the 
rivers as that of a train of cars. Our minds 
anywhere, when left to themselves, are al- 
ways thus busily drawing conclusions from 
false premises. 

I asked the Indian to make us a sugar- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 69 

bowl of birch bark, which he did, using 
the great knife which dangled in a sheath 
from his belt; but the bark broke at the 
corners when he bent it up, and he said 
it was not good — that there was a great 
difference in this respect between the bark 
of one canoe birch and that of another. 

My companion, wishing to distinguish 
between the black and white spruce, asked 
Polis to show him a twig of the latter, 
which he did at once, together with the 
black; indeed, he could distinguish them 
about as far as he could see them. As the 
two twigs appeared very much alike, my 
companion asked the Indian to point out 
the difference ; whereupon the latter, tak- 
ing the twigs, instantly remarked, as he 
passed his hand over them successively in 
a stroking manner, that the white was 
rough, that is, the needles stood up nearly 
perpendicular, but the black smooth, that 
is, as if bent down. This was an obvious 
difference, both to sight and touch. 

I asked him to get some black spruce 



70 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

root and make some thread. Whereupon, 
without looking up at the trees overhead, 
he began to grub in the ground, instantly 
distinguishing the black spruce roots, and 
cutting off a slender one, three or four 
feet long, and as big as a pipestem, he 
split the end with his knife, and taking a 
half between the thumb and forefinger of 
each hand, rapidly separated its whole 
length into two equal semi-cylindrical 
halves. Then, giving me another root, he 
said, " You try." 

But in my hands it immediately ran off 
one side, and I got only a very short 
piece. Though it looked easy, I found 
that there was a great art in splitting 
these roots. The split is skillfully hu- 
mored by bending short with this hand 
or that, and so kept in the middle. He 
then took off the bark from each half, 
pressing a short piece of cedar bark 
against the convex side with both hands, 
while he drew the root upward with his 
teeth. An Indian's teeth are strong, and 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 71 

I noticed that he used his often where we 
should have used a hand. They amounted 
to a third hand. He thus obtained in a 
moment a very neat, tough, and flexible 
string, which he could tie into a knot, or 
make into a fishline even. He said that 
you would be obliged to give half a dollar 
for spruce root enough for a canoe, thus 
prepared. 

He had discovered the day before that 
his canoe leaked a little, and said that it 
was owing to stepping into it violently. I 
asked him where he would get pitch to 
mend it with, for they commonly use 
hard pitch, obtained of the whites at 
Oldtown. He said that he could make 
something very similar, and equally good, 
of material which we had with us; and 
he wished me to guess what. But I could 
not, and he would not tell me, though he 
showed me a ball of it when made, as 
big as a pea and like black pitch, saying, 
at last, that there were some things which 
a man did not tell even his wife. 



72 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Being curious to see what kind of 
fishes there were in this dark, deep, slug- 
gish river, I cast in my line just before 
night, and caught several small sucker-like 
fishes, which the Indian at once rejected, 
saying that they were good for nothing. 
Also, he would not touch a pout, which 
I caught, and said that neither Indians 
nor whites thereabouts ever ate them. 
But he said that some small silvery fishes, 
which I called white chivin, were the best 
fish in the Penobscot waters, and if I 
would toss them up the bank to him, 
he would cook them for me. After clean- 
ing them, not very carefully, leaving the 
heads on, he laid them on the coals and 
so broiled them. 

Returning from a short walk, he 
brought a vine in his hand, saying that it 
made the best tea of anything in the woods. 
It was the creeping snowberry, which 
was quite common there, its berries just 
grown. So we determined to have some 
tea made of this. It had a slight checker- 







lishing 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 73 

berry flavor, and we both agreed that it 
was really better than the black tea which 
we had brought. We thought it quite a 
discovery, and that it might well be dried 
and sold in the shops. I for one, how- 
ever, am not an old tea-drinker and can- 
not speak with authority to others. The 
Indian said that they also used for tea a 
certain herb which grew in low ground, 
which he did not find there, and Labra- 
dor tea; also hemlock leaves, the last 
especially in winter when the other plants 
were covered with snow; and various 
other things. We could have had a new 
kind of tea every night. 

Just before night we saw a musquash^ 
the only one we saw in this voyage, 
swimming downward on the opposite side 
of the stream. The Indian, wishing to 
get one to eat, hushed us, saying, " Stop, 
me call 'em"; and, sitting flat on the 
bank, he began to make a curious squeak- 
ing, wiry sound with his lips, exerting 
himself considerably. I was greatly sur- 



74 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

prised — thought that I had at last got 
into the wilderness, and that he was a wild 
man indeed, to be talking to a musquash ! 
I did not know which of the two was the 
strangest to me. He seemed suddenly to 
have quite forsaken humanity, and gone 
over to the musquash side. The mus- 
quash, however, as near as I could see, did 
not turn aside, and the Indian said that he 
saw our fire ; but it was evident that he 
was in the habit of calling the musquash 
to him, as he said. An acquaintance of 
mine who was hunting moose in these 
woods a month after this, tells me that his 
Indian in this way repeatedly called the 
musquash within reach of his paddle in 
the moonlight, and struck at them. 

The Indian said a particularly long 
prayer this Sunday evening, as if to atone 
for working in the morning. 



MONDAY, JULY 27 

HAVING rapidly loaded the canoe, 
which the Indian always carefully 
attended to, that it might be well trimmed, 
and each having taken a look, as usual, to 
see that nothing was left, we set out again, 
descending the Caucomgomoc, and turn- 
ing northeasterly up the Umbazookskus. 
This name, the Indian said, meant Much 
Meadow River. We found it now very 
wide on account of the rains. The space 
between the woods, chiefly bare meadow, 
was from fifty to two hundred rods in 
breadth. 

In the water on the meadows grew 
sedges, wool-grass, the common blue flag 
abundantly, its flower just showing itself 
above the high water, as if it were a blue 
water-lily, and higher in the meadows a 
great many clumps of a peculiar narrow- 



76 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

leaved willow. Here also grew the red 
osier, its large fruit now whitish. 

It was unusual for the woods to be so 
distant from the shore, and there was 
quite an echo from them, but when I was 
shouting in order to awake it, the Indian 
reminded me that I should scare the 
moose, which he was looking out for, and 
which we all wanted to see. 

Having paddled several miles up the 
Umbazookskus, it suddenly contracted to 
a mere brook, narrow and swift, the larches 
and other trees approaching the bank and 
leaving no open meadow. We landed to 
get a black spruce pole for pushing against 
the stream. The one selected was quite 
slender, cut about ten feet long, merely 
whittled to a point, and the bark shaved 
off. 

While we were thus employed, two In- 
dians in a canoe hove in sight round the 
bushes, coming down stream. Our Indian 
knew one of them, an old man, and fell 
into conversation with him. He belonged 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH -jj 

at the foot of Moosehead. The other was 
of another tribe. They were returning 
from hunting. I asked the younger if they 
had seen any moose, to which he said 
"No"; but I, seeing the moose-hides 
sticking out from a great bundle made 
with their blankets in the middle of the 
canoe, added, " Only their hides." 

As he was a foreigner, he may have 
wished to deceive me, for it is against the 
law for white men and foreigners to kill 
moose in Maine at this season. But per- 
haps he need not have been alarmed, for 
the moose-wardens are not very particular. 
I heard of one who, being asked by a white 
man going into the woods what he would 
say if he killed a moose, answered, " If 
you bring me a quarter of it I guess you 
won't be troubled." His duty being, as he 
said, only to prevent the " indiscriminate " 
slaughter of them for their hides. I sup- 
pose that he would consider it an indiscrifn- 
inate slaughter when a quarter was not 
reserved for himself. 



78 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

We continued along through the most 
extensive larch wood which I had seen — 
tall and slender trees with fantastic branches. 
You do not find straggling trees of this spe- 
cies here and there throughout the wood, 
but rather a little forest of them. The same 
is the case with the white and red pines and 
some other trees, greatly to the convenience 
of the lumberer. They are of a social 
habit, growing in " veins," " clumps,'* 
"groups," or "communities," as the ex- 
plorers call them, distinguishing them far 
away, from the top of a hill or a tree, the 
white pines towering above the surround- 
ing forest, or else they form extensive 
forests by themselves. I should have liked 
to come across a large community of pines 
which had never been invaded by the 
lumbering army. 

We saw some fresh moose-tracks along 
the shore. The stream was only from one 
and one half to three rods wide, quite wind- 
ing, with occasional small islands, meadows, 
and some very swift and shallow places. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 79 

When we came to an island the Indian 
never hesitated which side to take, as if 
the current told him which was the short- 
est and deepest. It was lucky for us that 
the water was so high. We had to walk 
but once on this stream, carrying a part of 
the load, at a swift and shallow reach, while 
he got up with the canoe, not being obliged 
to take out, though he said it was very 
strong water. Once or twice we passed 
the red wreck of a bateau which had 
been stove some spring. 

While making this portage I saw many 
splendid specimens of the great purple 
fringed orchis, three feet high. It is re- 
markable that such delicate flowers should 
here adorn these wilderness paths. 

The Umbazookskus is called ten miles 
long. Having poled up the narrowest part 
some three or four miles, the next opening 
in the sky was over Umbazookskus Lake, 
which we suddenly entered about eleven 
o'clock in the forenoon. It stretches north- 
westerly four or five miles. We crossed 



8o CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

the southeast end to the carry into Mud 
Pond. 

Hodge, who went through this way to 
the St. Lawrence in the service of the State, 
calls the portage here a mile and three 
quarters long. The Indian said this was 
the wettest carry in the State, and as the 
season was a very wet one we anticipated 
an unpleasant walk. As usual he made 
one large bundle of the pork-keg, cook- 
ing-utensils, and other loose traps, by 
tying them up in his blanket. We should 
be obliged to go over the carry twice, and 
our method was to carry one half part way, 
and then go back for the rest. 

Our path ran close by the door of a log 
hut in a clearing at this end of the carry, 
which the Indian, who alone entered it, 
found to be occupied by a Canadian and 
his family, and that the man had been 
blind for a year. This was the first house 
above Chesuncook, and was built here, no 
doubt, because it was the route of the 
lumberers in the winter and spring. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 8i 

After a slight ascent from the lake 
through the springy soil of the Canadian's 
clearing, we entered on a level and very 
wet and rocky path through the dense 
evergreen forest, a loosely paved gutter 
merely, where we went leaping from rock 
to rock and from side to side in the vain 
attempt to keep out of the water and mud. 
It was on this carry that the white hunter 
whom I met in the stage, as he told me, 
had shot two bears a few months before. 
They stood directly in the path and did 
not turn out for him. He said that at this 
season bears were found on the mountains 
and hillsides in search of berries and were 
apt to be saucy. 

Here commences what was called, 
twenty years ago, the best timber land in 
the State. This very spot was described as 
** covered with the greatest abundance of 
pine," but now this appeared to me, com- 
paratively, an uncommon tree there — and 
yet you did not see where any more could 
have stood, amid the dense growth of 
cedar, fir, etc. 



82 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

The Indian with his canoe soon disap- 
peared before us, but ere long he came back 
and told us to take a path which turned 
off westward, it being better walking, and, 
at my suggestion, he agreed to leave a 
bough in the regular carry at that place 
that we might not pass it by mistake. 
Thereafter, he said, we were to keep the 
main path, and he added, "You see 'em 
my tracks/' 

But I had not much faith that we could 
distinguish his tracks, since others had 
passed over the carry within a few days. 
We turned off at the right place, but were 
soon confused by numerous logging-paths 
coming into the one we were on. How- 
ever, we kept what we considered the 
main path, though it was a winding one, 
and in this, at long intervals, we distin- 
guished a faint trace of a footstep. This, 
though comparatively unworn, was at first 
a better, or, at least, a dryer road than the 
regular carry which we had left. It led 
through an arbor-vitae wilderness of the 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 83 

grimmest character. The great fallen and 
rotting trees had been cut through and 
rolled aside, and their huge trunks abutted 
on the path on each side, while others still 
lay across it two or three feet high. 

It was impossible for us to discern the 
Indian's trail in the elastic moss, which, 
like a thick carpet, covered every rock and 
fallen tree, as well as the earth. Neverthe- 
less, I did occasionally detect the track of 
a man, and I gave myself some credit for 
it. I carried my whole load at once, a 
heavy knapsack, and a large rubber bag 
containing our bread and a blanket, swung 
on a paddle, in all about sixty pounds; but 
my companion preferred to make two jour- 
neys by short stages while I waited for him. 
We could not be sure that we were not 
depositing our loads each time farther off 
from the true path. 

As I sat waiting for my companion, he 
would seem to be gone a long time, and 
I had ample opportunity to make observa- 
tions on the forest. I now first began to 



84 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

be seriously molested by the black fly, a 
very small but perfectly formed fly of that 
color, about one tenth of an inch long, 
which I felt, and then saw, in swarms 
about me, as I sat by a wider and more 
than usually doubtful fork in this dark 
forest path. Remembering that I had a 
wash in my knapsack, prepared by a 
thoughtful hand in Bangor, I made haste 
to apply it to my face and hands, and was 
glad to find it effectual, as long as it was 
fresh, or for twenty minutes, not only 
against black flies, but all the insects that 
molested us. They would not alight on 
the part thus defended. It was composed 
of sweet oil and oil of turpentine, with a 
little oil of spearmint, and camphor. How- 
ever, I finally concluded that the remedy 
was worse than the disease, it was so dis- 
agreeable and inconvenient to have your 
face and hands covered with such a mix- 
ture. 

Three large slate-colored birds of the 
jay genus, the Canada jay, came flitting 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 85 

silently and by degrees toward me, and 
hopped down the limbs inquisitively to 
within seven or eight feet. Fish hawks 
from the lake uttered their sharp whist- 
ling notes low over the top of the forest 
near me, as if they were anxious about a 
nest there. 

After I had sat there some time I no- 
ticed at this fork in the path a tree which 
had been blazed, and the letters " Chamb. 
L." written on it with red chalk. This I 
knew to mean Chamberlain Lake. So I 
concluded that on the whole we were on 
the right course. 

My companion having returned with 
his bag, we set forward again. The walk- 
ing rapidly grew worse and the path more 
indistinct, and at length we found ourselves 
in a more open and regular swamp made 
less passable than ordinary by the unusual 
wetness of the season. We sank a foot deep 
in water and mud at every step, and some- 
times up to our knees. The trail was almost 
obliterated, being no more than a mus- 



86 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

quash leaves in similar places when he parts 
the floating sedge. In fact, it probably was 
a musquash trail in some places. We con- 
cluded that if Mud Pond was as muddy as 
the approach to it was wet, it certainly de- 
served its name. It would have been amus- 
ing to behold the dogged and deliberate 
pace at which we entered that swamp, 
without interchanging a word, as if deter- 
mined to go through it, though it should 
come up to our necks. Having penetrated 
a considerable distance into this and found 
a tussock on which we could deposit our 
loads, though there was no place to sit, 
my companion went back for the rest of 
his pack. 

After a long while my companion came 
back, and the Indian with him. We had 
taken the wrong road, and the Indian had 
lost us. He had gone back to the Cana- 
dian's camp and asked him which way we 
had probably gone, since he could better 
understand the ways of white men, and he 
told him correctly that we had undoubt- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 87 

edly taken the supply road to Chamber- 
lain Lake. The Indian was greatly sur- 
prised that we should have taken what he 
called a " tow," that is, tote, toting, or 
supply, road instead of a carry path, — that 
we had not followed his tracks, — said 
it was "strange," and evidently thought 
little of our woodcraft. 

Having held a consultation and eaten a 
mouthful of bread, we concluded that it 
would perhaps be nearer for us two now 
to keep on to Chamberlain Lake, omit- 
ting Mud Pond, than to go back and start 
anew for the last place, though the In- 
dian had never been through this way and 
knew nothing about it. In the meanwhile 
he would go back and finish carrying over 
his canoe and bundle to Mud Pond, cross 
that, and go down its outlet and up Cham- 
berlain Lake, and trust to meet us there 
before night. It was now a little after 
noon. He supposed that the water in 
which we stood had flowed back from 
Mud Pond, which could not be far off 



88 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

eastward, but was unapproachable through 
the dense cedar swamp. 

Keeping on, we were ere long agreeably 
disappointed by reaching firmer ground, 
and we crossed a ridge where the path 
was more distinct, but there was never any 
outlook over the forest. At one place I 
heard a very clear and piercing note from 
a small hawk as he dashed through the 
tree-tops over my head. We also saw and 
heard several times the red squirrel. This, 
according to the Indian, is the only squir- 
rel found in those woods, except a very 
few striped ones. It must have a solitary 
time in that dark evergreen forest, where 
there is so little life, seventy-five miles 
from a road as we had come. I wondered 
how he could call any particular tree 
there his home, and yet he would run up 
the stem of one out of the myriads, as if 
it were an old road to him. I fancied that 
he must be glad to see us, though he did 
seem to chide us. One of those somber 
fir and spruce woods is not complete un- 



f- 




The Red Squirrel 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 89 

less you hear from out its cavernous mossy 
and twiggy recesses his line alarum — his 
spruce voice, Hke the v^'orking of the sap 
through some crack in a tree. Such an im- 
pertinent fellow would occasionally try to 
alarm the wood about me. 

"Oh," said I, "I am well acquainted 
with your family. I know your cousins in 
Concord very well." But my overtures 
were vain, for he would withdraw by his 
aerial turnpikes into a more distant cedar- 
top, and spring his rattle again. 

We entered another swamp, at a neces- 
sarily slow pace, where the walking was 
worse than ever, not only on account of 
the water, but the fallen timber, which 
often obliterated the indistinct trail en- 
tirely. The fallen trees were so numerous 
that for long distances the route was 
through a succession of small yards, where 
we climbed over fences as high as our 
heads, down into water often up to our 
knees, and then over another fence into a 
second yard, and so on. In many places 



90 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

the canoe would have run if it had not 
been for the fallen timber. Again it would 
be more open, but equally wet, too wet 
for trees to grow. It was a mossy swamp, 
which it required the long legs of a moose 
to traverse, and it is very likely that we 
scared some of them in our transit, though 
we saw none. It was ready to echo the 
growl of a bear, the howl of a wolf, or the 
scream of a panther ; but when you get 
fairly into the middle of one of these grim 
forests you are surprised to find that the 
larger inhabitants are not at home com- 
monly, but have left only a puny red squir- 
rel to bark at you. Generally speaking, a 
howling wilderness does not howl ; it is the 
imagination of the traveler that does the 
howling. I did, however, see one dead 
porcupine. Perhaps he had succumbed to 
the difficulties of the way. These bristly 
fellows are a very suitable small fruit of 
such unkempt wildernesses. 

Making a logging-road in the Maine 
woods is called "swamping" it, and they 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 91 

who do the work are called "swampers." 
I now perceived the fitness of the term. 
This was the most perfectly swamped of 
all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have 
cooperated with art here. However, I sup- 
pose they would tell you that this name 
took its origin from the fact that the chief 
work of roadmakers in those woods is to 
make the swamps passable. We came to 
a stream where the bridge, which had been 
made of logs tied together with cedar 
bark, had been broken up, and we got 
over as we could. Such as it was, this 
ruined bridge was the chief evidence that 
we were on a path of any kind. 

We then crossed another low rising 
ground, and I, who wore shoes, had an 
opportunity to wring out my stockings, 
but my companion, who used boots, had 
found that this was not a safe experiment 
for him, for he might not be able to get 
his wet boots on again. He went over the 
whole ground, or water, three times, for 
which reason our progress was very slow. 



92 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Beside that, the water softened our feet, 
and to some extent unfitted them for walk- 
ing. 

As I sat waiting for him it would natur- 
ally seem an unaccountable time that he 
was gone. Therefore, as I could see through 
the woods that the sun was getting low, 
and it was uncertain how far the lake 
might be, even if we were on the right 
course, and in what part of the world we 
should find ourselves at nightfall, I pro- 
posed that I should push through with 
what speed I could, leaving boughs to mark 
my path, and find the lake and the In- 
dian, if possible, before night, and send 
the latter back to carry my companion's 
bag. 

Having gone about a mile I heard a 
noise like the note of an owl, which I 
soon discovered to be made by the Indian, 
and answering him, we soon came together. 
He had reached the lake after crossing 
Mud Pond and running some rapids be- 
low it, and had come up about a mile and 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 93 

a half on our path. If he had not come 
back to meet us, we probably should not 
have found him that night, for the path 
branched once or twice before reaching 
this particular part of the lake. So he went 
back for my companion and his bag. Hav- 
ing waded through another stream, where 
the bridge of logs had been broken up 
and half floated away, we continued on 
through alternate mud and water to the 
shores of Apmoojenegamook Lake, which 
we reached in season for a late supper, in- 
stead of dining there, as we had expected, 
having gone without our dinner. 

It was at least five miles by the way we 
had come, and as my companion had gone 
over most of it three times he had walked 
full a dozen miles. In the winter, when the 
water is frozen and the snow is four feet 
deep, it is no doubt a tolerable path to a 
footman. If you want an exact recipe for 
making such a road, take one part Mud 
Pond, and dilute it with equal parts of 
Umbazookskus and Apmoojenegamook; 



94 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

then send a family of musquash through 
to locate it, look after the grades and cul- 
verts, and finish it to their minds, and let 
a hurricane follow to do the fencing. 

We had come out on a point extending 
into Apmoojenegamook, or Chamberlain 
Lake, where there was a broad, gravelly, 
and rocky shore, encumbered with bleached 
logs and trees. We were rejoiced to see 
such dry things in that part of the world. 
But at first we did not attend to dryness 
so much as to mud and wetness. We all 
three walked into the lake up to our mid- 
dle to wash our clothes. 

This was another noble lake, twelve 
miles long; if you add Telos Lake, which, 
since the dam was built, has been con- 
nected with it by dead water, it will be 
twenty; and it is apparently from a mile 
and a half to two miles wide. We were 
about midway its length on the south side. 
We could see the only clearing in these 
parts, called the " Chamberlain Farm," 
with two or three log buildings close to- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 95 

gether, on the opposite shore, some two 
and a half miles distant. The smoke of 
our fire on the shore brought over two men 
in a canoe from the farm, that being a 
common signal agreed on when one wishes 
to cross. It took them about half an hour 
to come over, and they had their labor for 
their pains this time. 

After putting on such dry clothes as we 
had, and hanging the others to dry on the 
pole which the Indian arranged over the 
fire, we ate our supper, and lay down on 
the pebbly shore with our feet to the fire 
without pitching our tent, making a thin 
bed of grass to cover the stones. 

Here first I was molested by the little 
midge called the no-see-em, especially over 
the sand at the water's edge, for it is a 
kind of sand-fly. You would not observe 
them but for their light-colored wings. 
They are said to get under your clothes 
and produce a feverish heat, which I sup- 
pose was what I felt that night. 

Our insect foes in this excursion were. 



96 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

first, mosquitoes, only troublesome at night, 
or when we sat still on shore by day; sec- 
ond, black flies [simidium molestum)^ which 
molested us more or less on the carries by 
day, and sometimes in narrower parts of 
the stream ; third, moose-flies, stout brown 
flies much like a horsefly. They can bite 
smartly, according to Polis, but are easily 
avoided or killed. Fourth, the no-see-ems. 
Of all these, the mosquitoes are the only 
ones that troubled me seriously, but as I 
was provided with a wash and a veil, they 
have not made any deep impression. 

The Indian would not use our wash to 
protect his face and hands, for fear that 
it would hurt his skin, nor had he any 
veil. He, therefore, suflFered from insects 
throughout this journey more than either 
of us. He regularly tied up his face in his 
handkerchief, and buried it in his blanket, 
and he now finally lay down on the sand 
between us and the fire for the sake of the 
smoke, which he tried to make enter his 
blanket about his face, and for the same 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 97 

purpose he lit his pipe and breathed the 
smoke into his blanket. 

In the middle of the night we heard 
the voice of the loon, loud and distinct, 
from far over the lake. It is a very wild 
sound, quite in keeping with the place 
and the circumstances of the traveler, and 
very unlike the voice of a bird. I could 
lie awake for hours listening to it, it is so 
thrilling. When camping in such a wil- 
derness as this, you are prepared to hear 
sounds from some of its inhabitants which 
will give voice to its wildness. Some idea 
of bears, wolves, or panthers runs in your 
head naturally, and when this note is first 
heard very far off at midnight, as you lie 
with your ear to the ground, — the forest 
being perfectly still about you, you take 
it for granted that it is the voice of a 
wolf or some other wild beast, — you con- 
clude that it is a pack of wolves baying 
the moon, or, perchance, cantering after 
a moose. It was the unfailing and charac- 
teristic sound of those lakes. 



98 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Some friends of mine, who two years 
ago went up the Caucomgomoc River, 
were serenaded by wolves while moose- 
hunting by moonlight. It was a sudden 
burst, as if a hundred demons had broke 
loose, — a startling sound enough, which, 
if any, would make your hair stand on 
end, — and all was still again. It lasted 
but a moment, and you 'd have thought 
there were twenty of them, when probably 
there were only two or three. They heard 
it twice only, and they said that it gave 
expression to the wilderness which it 
lacked before. I heard of some men, who, 
while skinning a moose lately in those 
woods, were driven off from the carcass 
by a pack of wolves, which ate it up. 

This of the loon — I do not mean its 
laugh, but its looning — is a long-drawn 
call, as it were, sometimes singularly hu- 
man to my ear — hoo-hoo-ooooo ^ like the 
hallooing of a man on a very high key, 
having thrown his voice into his head. I 
have heard a sound exactly like it when 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 99 

breathing heavily through my own nos- 
trils, half awake at ten at night, suggest- 
ing my affinity to the loon; as if its 
language were but a dialect of my own, 
after all. Formerly, when lying awake at 
midnight in those woods, I had listened 
to hear some words or syllables of their 
language, but it chanced that I listened in 
vain until I heard the cry of the loon. I 
have heard it occasionally on the ponds 
of my native town, but there its wild- 
ness is not enhanced by the surrounding 
scenery. 

I was awakened at midnight by some 
heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, 
flapping by close over my head along the 
shore. So, turning the other side of my 
half-clad body to the fire, I sought slum- 
ber again. 



w 



VI 

TUESDAY, JULY 28 

HEN we awoke we found a heavy 
dew on our blankets. I lay awake 
very early and listened to the clear, shrill 
ah, te te, te te, te of the white-throated 
sparrow, repeated at short intervals, with- 
out the least variation, for half an hour, 
as if it could not enough express its hap- 
piness. 

We did some more washing in the lake 
this morning, and, with our clothes hung 
about on the dead trees and rocks, the 
shore looked like washing-day at home. 
The Indian, taking the hint, borrowed 
the soap, and, walking into the lake, 
washed his only cotton shirt on his per- 
son, then put on his pants and let it dry 
on him. 

I observed that he wore a cotton shirt, 
originally white, a greenish flannel one 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH loi 

over it, but no waistcoat, flannel drawers, 
and strong linen or duck pants, which also 
had been white, blue woolen stockings, 
cowhide boots, and a Kossuth hat.i He car- 
ried no change of clothing, but, putting on 
a stout, thick jacket, which he laid aside 
in the canoe, and seizing a full-sized axe, 
his gun and ammunition, and a blanket, 
which would do for a sail or knapsack, if 
wanted, and strapping on his belt, which 
contained a large sheath-knife, he walked 
off at once, ready to be gone all summer. 
This looked very independent — a few 
simple and effective tools, and no rubber 
clothing. He was always the first ready 
to start in the morning. Instead of carry- 
ing a large bundle of his own extra cloth- 
ing, etc., he brought back the greatcoats 
of moose tied up in his blanket. I found 
that his outfit was the result of a long ex- 
perience, and in the main hardly to be 
improved on, unless by washing and an 

" A soft felt hat of the kind worn by the Hungarian patriot, 
Kossuth, on his visit to this country in 1851-52. 



102 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

extra shirt. Wanting a button here, he 
walked off to a place where some Indians 
had recently encamped, and searched for 
one, but I believe in vain. 

Having softened our stiffened boots and 
shoes with the pork fat, the usual disposi- 
tion of what was left at breakfast, we 
crossed the lake, steering in a diagonal di- 
rection northeastly about four miles to the 
outlet. The Indian name, Apmoojenega- 
mook, means lake that is crossed, because 
the usual course lies across and not along 
it. We did not intend to go far down the 
Allegash, but merely to get a view of the 
lakes which are its source, and then re- 
turn this way to the East Branch of the 
Penobscot. 

After reaching the middle of the lake, 
we found the waves pretty high, and the 
Indian warned my companion, who was 
nodding, that he must not allow himself 
to fall asleep in the canoe lest he should 
upset us ; adding, that when Indians want 
to sleep in a canoe, they lie down straight 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 103 

on the bottom. But in this crowded one 
that was impossible. However, he said 
that he would nudge him if he saw him 
nodding. 

A belt of dead trees stood all around the 
lake, some far out in the water, with others 
prostrate behind them, and they made the 
shore, for the most part, almost inaccessi- 
ble. This is the effect of the dam at the 
outlet. Thus the natural sandy or rocky 
shore, with its green fringe, was concealed 
and destroyed. We coasted westward along 
the north side, searching for the outlet, 
about quarter of a mile distant from this 
savage-looking shore, on which the waves 
were breaking violently, knowing that it 
might easily be concealed amid this rub- 
bish, or by the overlapping of the shore. 
It is remarkable how little these important 
gates to a lake are blazoned. There is no 
triumphal arch over the modest inlet or 
outlet, but at some undistinguished point 
it trickles in or out through the uninter- 
rupted forest, almost as through a sponge. 



I04 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

We reached the outlet in about an hour, 
and carried over the dam there, which is 
quite a solid structure, and about one 
quarter of a mile farther there was a sec- 
ond dam. The result of this particular 
damming about Chamberlain Lake is that 
the headwaters of the St. John are made to 
flow by Bangor. They have thus dammed 
all the larger lakes, raising their broad 
surfaces many feet, thus turning the forces 
of Nature against herself, that they might 
float their spoils out of the country. They 
rapidly run out of these immense forests 
all the finer and more accessible pine tim- 
ber, and then leave the bears to watch the 
decaying dams, not clearing nor cultivat- 
ing the land, nor making roads, nor build- 
ing houses, but leaving it a wilderness, as 
they found it. In many parts only these 
dams remain, like deserted beaver dams. 
Think how much land they have flowed 
without asking Nature's leave. 

The wilderness experiences a sudden rise 
of all her streams and lakes. She feels ten 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 105 

thousand vermin gnawing at the base of 
her noblest trees. Many combining drag 
them off, jarring over the roots of the sur- 
vivors, and tumble them into the nearest 
stream, till, the fairest having fallen, they 
scamper off to ransack some new wilder- 
ness, and all is still again. It is as when a 
migrating army of mice girdles a forest of 
pines. The chopper fells trees from the 
same motive that the mouse gnaws them 
— to get his living. You tell me that he 
has a more interesting family than the 
mouse. That is as it happens. He speaks 
of a " berth " of timber, a good place for 
him to get into, just as a worm might. 

When the chopper would praise a pine 
he will commonly tell you that the one 
he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood 
on its stump; as if that were what the pine 
had grown for, to become the footstool 
of oxen. In my mind's eye I can see these 
unwieldy tame deer, with a yoke binding 
them together, the brazen-tipped horns 
betraying their servitude, taking their 



io6 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

stand on the stump of each giant pine in 
succession throughout this whole forest, 
and chewing their cud there, until it is 
nothing but an ox-pasture, and run out at 
that. As if it were good for the oxen, 
and some medicinal quality ascended into 
their nostrils. Or is their elevated position 
intended merely as a symbol of the fact 
that the pastoral comes next in order to 
the sylvan or hunter life ? 

The character of the logger's admira- 
tion is betrayed by his very mode of ex- 
pressing it. If he told all that was in his 
mind, he would say, " It was so big that I 
cut it down, and then a yoke of oxen could 
stand on its stump." He admires the log, 
the carcass or corpse, more than the tree. 
Why, my dear sir, the tree might have 
stood on its own stump, and a great deal 
more comfortably and firmly than a yoke 
of oxen can, if you had not cut it down. 

The Anglo-American can indeed cut 
down and grub up all this waving forest, 
and make a stump speech on its ruins, but 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 107 

he cannot converse with the spirit of the 
tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and 
mythology which retire as he advances. 
He ignorantly erases mythological tablets 
in order to print his handbills and town- 
meeting warrants on them. Before he has 
learned his a b c in the beautiful but mys- 
tic lore of the wilderness he cuts it down, 
puts up a " deestrict " schoolhouse, and 
introduces Webster's spelling-book. 

Below the last dam, the river being 
swift and shallow, we two walked about 
half a mile to lighten the canoe. I made 
it a rule to carry my knapsack when I 
walked, and also to keep it tied to a cross- 
bar when in the canoe, that it might be 
found with the canoe if we should upset. 

I heard the dog-day locust here, a sound 
which I had associated only with more 
open, if not settled countries. 

We were now fairly on the Allegash 
River. After perhaps two miles of river 
we entered Heron Lake, scaring up forty 
or fifty young sheldrakes, at the entrance. 



io8 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

which ran over the water with great rap- 
idity, as usual in a long line. 

This lake, judging from the map, is 
about ten miles long. We had entered it 
on the southwest side, and saw a dark moun- 
tain northeast over the lake which the In- 
dian said was called Peaked Mountain, and 
used by explorers to look for timber from. 
The shores were in the same ragged and 
unsightly condition, encumbered with dead 
timber, both fallen and standing, as in the 
last lake, owing to the dam on the Allegash 
below. Some low points or islands were 
almost drowned. 

I saw something white a mile off on the 
water, which turned out to be a great gull 
on a rock, which the Indian would have 
been glad to kill and eat. But it flew away 
long before we were near ; and also a flock 
of summer ducks that were about the rock 
with it. I asking him about herons, since 
this was Heron Lake, he said that he found 
the blue heron's nests in the hard-wood 
trees. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 109 

Rounding a point, we stood across a bay 
toward a large island three or four miles 
down the lake. We met with shadflies 
midway, about a mile from the shore, and 
they evidently fly over the whole lake. 
On Moosehead I had seen a large devil's- 
needle half a mile from the shore, coming 
from the middle of the lake, where it was 
three or four miles wide at least. It had 
probably crossed. 

We landed on the southeast side of the 
island, which was rather elevated, and 
densely wooded, with a rocky shore, in 
season for an early dinner. Somebody had 
camped there not long before and left the 
frame on which they stretched a moose- 
hide. The Indian proceeded at once to cut 
a canoe birch, slanted it up against another 
tree on the shore, tying it with a withe, 
and lay down to sleep in its shade. We 
made this island the limit of our excursion 
in this direction. 

The next dam was about fifteen miles 
farther north down the Allegash. We had 



no CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

been told in Bangor of a man who lived 
alone, a sort of hermit, at that dam, to 
take care of it, who spent his time tossing 
a bullet from one hand to the other, for 
want of employment. This sort of tit-for- 
tat intercourse between his two hands, 
bandying to and fro a leaden subject, seems 
to have been his symbol for society. 

There was another island visible toward 
the north end of the lake, with an elevated 
clearing on it ; but we learned afterward 
that it was not inhabited, had only been 
used as a pasture for cattle which sum- 
mered in these woods. This unnaturally 
smooth-shaven, squarish spot, in the midst 
of the otherwise uninterrupted forest, only 
reminded us how uninhabited the country 
was. You would sooner expect to meet a 
bear than an ox in such a clearing. At any 
rate, it must have been a surprise to the 
bears when they came across it. Such, seen 
far or near, you know at once to be man's 
work, for Nature never does it. In order 
to let in the light to the earth he clears off 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH iii 

the forest on the hillsides and plains, and 
sprinkles fine grass seed like an enchanter, 
and so carpets the earth with a firm sward. 

Polls had evidently more curiosity re- 
specting the few settlers in those woods 
than we. If nothing was said, he took it 
for granted that we wanted to go straight 
to the next log hut. Having observed that 
we came by the log huts at Chesuncook, 
and the blind Canadian's at the Mud Pond 
carry, without stopping to communicate 
with the inhabitants, he took occasion 
now to suggest that the usual way was, 
when you came near a house, to go to it, 
and tell the inhabitants what you had seen 
or heard, and then they told you what they 
had seen; but we laughed and said that 
we had had enough of houses for the pres- 
ent, and had come here partly to avoid 
them. 

In the meanwhile, the wind, increas- 
ing, blew down the Indian's birch and 
created such a sea that we found ourselves 
prisoners on the island, the nearest shore 



112 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

being perhaps a mile distant, and we took 
the canoe out to prevent its drifting away. 
We did not know but we should be com- 
pelled to spend the rest of the day and the 
night there. At any rate, the Indian went 
to sleep again, my companion busied him- 
self drying his plants, and I rambled along 
the shore westward, which was quite stony, 
and obstructed with fallen bleached or 
drifted trees for four or five rods in width. 

Our Indian said that he was a doctor, and 
could tell me some medicinal use for every 
plant I could show him. I immediately 
tried him. He said that the inner bark 
of the aspen was good for sore eyes ; and 
so with various other plants, proving him- 
self as good as his word. According to his 
account, he had acquired such knowledge 
in his youth from a wise old Indian with 
whom he associated, and he lamented that 
the present generation of Indians " had 
lost a great deal.'* 

He said that the caribou was a "very 
great runner," that there were none about 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 113 

this lake now, though there used to be 
many, and, pointing to the belt of dead 
trees caused by the dams, he added: "No 
likum stump. When he sees that he 
scared." 

Pointing southeasterly over the lake and 
distant forest, he observed, " Me go Old- 
town in three days." 

I asked how he would get over the 
swamps and fallen trees. "Oh," said he, 
"in winter all covered, go anywhere on 
snowshoes, right across lakes." 

What a wilderness walk for a man to take 
alone ! None of your half-mile swamps, 
none of your mile-wide woods merely, as 
on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, 
only a dark mountain or a lake for guide- 
board and station, over ground much of it 
impassable in summer ! 

Here was traveling of the old heroic 
kind over the unaltered face of nature. 
From the Allegash River, across great 
Apmoojenegamook, he takes his way under 
the bear-haunted slopes of Katahdin to 



114 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Pamadumcook and Millinocket's inland 
seas, and so to the forks of the Nicketow, 
ever pushing the boughs of the fir and 
spruce aside, with his load of furs, con- 
tending day and night, night and day, with 
the shaggy demon vegetation, traveling 
through the mossy graveyard of trees. Or 
he could go by "that rough tooth of the 
sea" Kineo, great source of arrows and of 
spears to the ancients, when weapons of 
stone were used. Seeing and hearing moose, 
caribou, bears, porcupines, lynxes, wolves, 
and panthers. Places where he might live 
and die and never hear of the United States 
— never hear of America. 

There is a lumberer's road called the 
Eagle Lake Road from the Seboois to the 
east side of this lake. It may seem strange 
that any road through such a wilderness 
should be passable, even in winter, but at 
that season, wherever lumbering operations 
are actively carried on, teams are contin- 
ually passing on the single track, and it 
becomes as smooth almost as a railway. I 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 115 

am told that in the Aroostook country the 
sleds are required by law to be of one width, 
four feet, and sleighs must be altered to fit 
the track, so that one runner may go in 
one rut and the other follow the horse. 
Yet it is very bad turning out. 

We had for some time seen a thunder- 
shower coming up from the west over the 
woods of the island, and heard the mut- 
tering of the thunder, though we were in 
doubt whether it would reach us; but now 
the darkness rapidly increasing, and a fresh 
breeze rustling the forest, we hastily put up 
the plants which we had been drying, and 
with one consent made a rush for the tent 
material and set about pitching it. A place 
was selected and stakes and pins cut in the 
shortest possible time, and we were pin- 
ning it down lest it should be blown away, 
when the storm suddenly burst over us. 

As we lay huddled together under the 
tent, which leaked considerably about the 
sides, with our baggage at our feet, we 
listened to some of the grandest thunder 



ii6 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

which I ever heard — rapid peals, round 
and plump, bang, bang, bang, in succes- 
sion, like artillery from some fortress in 
the sky ; and the lightning was propor- 
tionally brilliant. The Indian said, " It 
must be good powder." All for the bene- 
fit of the moose and us, echoing far over 
the concealed lakes. I thought it must be 
a place which the thunder loved, where 
the lightning practiced to keep its hand 
in, and it would do no harm to shatter a 
few pines. 

Looking out, I perceived that the violent 
shower falling on the lake had almost in- 
stantaneously flattened the waves, and, it 
clearing off, we resolved to start immedi- 
ately, before the wind raised them again. 

Getting outside, I said that I saw clouds 
still in the southwest, and heard thunder 
there. We embarked, nevertheless, and 
paddled rapidly back toward the dams. 

At the outlet of Chamberlain Lake we 
were overtaken by another gusty rain- 
storm, which compelled us to take shelter. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 117 

the Indian under his canoe on the bank, 
and we under the edge of the dam. How- 
ever, we were more scared than wet. From 
my covert I could see the Indian peeping 
out from beneath his canoe to see what 
had become of the rain. When we had 
taken our respective places thus once or 
twice, the rain not coming down in ear- 
nest, we commenced rambling about the 
neighborhood, for the wind had by this 
time raised such waves on the lake that 
we could not stir, and we feared that we 
should be obliged to camp there. We got 
an early supper on the dam and tried for 
fish, while waiting for the tumult to sub- 
side. The fishes were not only few, but 
small and worthless. 

At length, just before sunset, we set out 
again. It was a wild evening when we 
coasted up the north side of this Apmooje- 
negamook Lake. One thunder-storm was 
just over, and the waves which it had 
raised still running with violence, and an- 
other storm was now seen coming up in 



ii8 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

the southwest, far over the lake ; but it 
might be worse in the morning, and we 
wished to get as far as possible on our way 
while we might. 

It blew hard against the shore, which 
was as dreary and harborless as you can 
conceive. For half a dozen rods in width 
it was a perfect maze of submerged trees, 
all dead and bare and bleaching, some 
standing half their original height, others 
prostrate, and criss-across, above or be- 
neath the surface, and mingled with them 
were loose trees and limbs and stumps, 
beating about. We could not have landed 
if we would, without the greatest danger 
of being swamped; so blow as it might, 
we must depend on coasting. It was twi- 
light, too, and that stormy cloud was ad- 
vancing rapidly in our rear. It was a 
pleasant excitement, yet we were glad to 
reach, at length, the cleared shore of the 
Chamberlain Farm. 

We landed on a low and thinly wooded 
point, and while my companions were 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 119 

pitching the tent, I ran up to the house 
to get some sugar, our six pounds being 
gone. It was no wonder they were, for 
Polis had a sweet tooth. He would first 
fill his dipper nearly a third full of sugar, 
and then add the coffee to it. Here was a 
clearing extending back from the lake to 
a hilltop, with some dark-colored log 
buildings and a storehouse in it, and half 
a dozen men standing in front of the prin- 
cipal hut, greedy for news. Among them 
was the man who tended the dam on the 
Allegash and tossed the bullet. He, having 
charge of the dams, and learning that we 
were going to Webster Stream the next 
day, told me that some of their men, who 
were haying at Telos Lake, had shut the 
dam at the canal there in order to catch 
trout, and if we wanted more water to 
take us through the canal we might raise 
the gate. 

They were unwilling to spare more than 
four pounds of brown sugar, — unlocking 
the storehouse to get it, — since they only 



120 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

kept a little for such cases as this, and 
they charged twenty cents a pound for it, 
which certainly it was worth to get it up 
there. 

When I returned to the shore it was 
quite dark, but we had a rousing fire to 
warm and dry us by, and a snug apart- 
ment behind it. The Indian went up to 
the house to inquire after a brother who 
had been absent hunting a year or two, 
and while another shower was beginning, 
I groped about cutting spruce and arbor- 
vits twigs for a bed. I preferred the ar- 
bor-vitas on account of its fragrance, and 
spread it particularly thick about the 
shoulders. It is remarkable with what 
pure satisfaction the traveler in those 
woods will reach his camping-ground on 
the eve of a tempestuous night like this, 
as if he had got to his inn, and, rolling 
himself in his blanket, stretch himself 
on his six-feet-by-two bed of dripping fir 
twigs, with a thin sheet of cotton for roof, 
snug as a meadow mouse in its nest. In- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 121 

variably our best nights were those when 
it rained, for then we were not troubled 
with mosquitoes. 

You soon come to disregard rain on 
such excursions, at least in the summer, 
it is so easy to dry yourself, supposing a 
dry change of clothing is not to be had. 
You can much sooner dry you by such a 
fire as you can make in the woods than in 
anybody's kitchen, the fireplace is so much 
larger, and wood so much more abundant. 
A shed-shaped tent will catch and reflect 
the heat, and you may be drying while 
you are sleeping. 

Some who have leaky roofs in the 
towns may have been kept awake, but we 
were soon lulled asleep by a steady, soak- 
ing rain, which lasted all night. 



VII 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29 

WHEN we awoke it had done rain- 
ing, though it was still cloudy. The 
fire was put out, and the Indian's boots, 
which stood under the eaves of the tent, 
were half full of water. He was much 
more improvident in such respects than 
either of us, and he had to thank us for 
keeping his powder dry. We decided to 
cross the lake at once, before breakfast ; 
and before starting I took the bearing of 
the shore which we wished to strike, about 
three miles distant, lest a sudden misty rain 
should conceal it when we were midway. 
Though the bay in which we were was 
perfectly quiet and smooth, we found the 
lake already wide awake outside, but not 
dangerously or unpleasantly so. Neverthe- 
less, when you get out on one of those 
lakes in a canoe like this, you do not for- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 123 

get that you are completely at the mercy 
of the wind, and a fickle power it is. The 
playful waves may at any time become too 
rude for you in their sport, and play right 
on over you. After much steady paddling 
and dancing over the dark waves we found 
ourselves in the neighborhood of the 
southern land. We breakfasted on a rocky 
point, the first convenient place that of- 
fered. 

It was well enough that we crossed thus 
early, for the waves now ran quite high, 
but beyond this point we had compara- 
tively smooth water. You can commonly 
go along one side or the other of a lake, 
when you cannot cross it. 

My companion and I, having a discus- 
sion on some point of ancient history, were 
amused by the attitude which the Indian, 
who could not tell what we were talking 
about, assumed. He constituted himself 
umpire, and, judging by our air and ges- 
ture, he very seriously remarked from time 
to time, "You beat," or " He beat." 



124 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Leaving a spacious bay on our left, we 
entered through a short strait into a small 
lake a couple of miles over, and thence 
into Telos Lake. This curved round 
toward the northeast, and may have been 
three or four miles long as we paddled. 

The outlet from the lake into the East 
Branch of the Penobscot is an artificial 
one, and it was not very apparent where 
it was exactly, but the lake ran curving 
far up northeasterly into two narrow val- 
leys or ravines, as if it had for a long time 
been groping its way toward the Penob- 
scot waters. By observing where the hori- 
zon was lowest, and following the longest 
of these, we at length reached the dam, 
having come about a dozen miles from 
the last camp. Somebody had left a line 
set for trout, and the jackknife with 
which the bait had been cut on the dam 
beside it, and, on a log close by, a loaf of 
bread. These proved the property of a 
solitary hunter, whom we soon met, and 
canoe and gun and traps were not far off. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 125 

He told us that it was twenty miles to the 
foot of Grand Lake, and that the first 
house below the foot of the lake, on the 
East Branch, was Hunt's, about forty-five 
miles farther. 

This hunter, who was a quite small, 
sunburnt man, having already carried his 
canoe over, had nothing so interesting and 
pressing to do as to observe our transit. 
He had been out a month or more alone. 
How much more respectable is the life 
of the solitary pioneer or settler in these, 
or any woods — having real difficulties, 
not of his own creation, drawing his sub- 
sistence directly from nature — than that 
of the helpless multitudes in the towns 
who depend on gratifying the extremely 
artificial wants of society and are thrown 
out of employment by hard times! 

Telos Lake, the head of the St. John 
on this side, and Webster Pond, the head 
of the East Branch of the Penobscot, are 
only about a mile apart, and they are con- 
nected by a ravine, in which but little 



126 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

digging was required to make the water 
of the former, which is the highest, flow 
into the latter. This canal is something 
less than a mile long and about four rods 
wide. The rush of the water has pro- 
duced such changes in the canal that it 
has now the appearance of a very rapid 
mountain stream flowing through a ravine, 
and you would not suspect that any dig- 
ging had been required to persuade the 
waters of the St. John to flow into the 
Penobscot here. It was so winding that 
one could see but a little way down. 

It is wonderful how well watered this 
country is. As you paddle across a lake, 
bays will be pointed out to you, by fol- 
lowing up which, and perhaps the tribu- 
tary stream which empties in, you may, 
after a short portage, or possibly, at some 
seasons, none at all, get into another 
river, which empties far away from the 
one you are on. Generally, you may go 
in any direction in a canoe, by making 
frequent but not very long portages. It 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 127 

seems as if the more youthful and impres- 
sionable streams can hardly resist the nu- 
merous invitations and temptations to 
leave their native beds and run down their 
neighbors' channels. 

Wherever there is a channel for water 
there is a road for the canoe. It is said 
that some Western steamers can run on 
a heavy dew, whence we can imagine 
what a canoe may do. 

This canal, so called, was a consider- 
able and extremely rapid and rocky river. 
The Indian decided that there was water 
enough in it without raising the dam, 
which would only make it more vio- 
lent, and that he would run down it alone, 
while we carried the greater part of the 
baggage. Our provisions being about half 
consumed, there was the less left in the 
canoe. We had thrown away the pork- 
keg and wrapped its contents in birch 
bark. 

Following a moist trail through the 
forest, we reached the head of Webster 



128 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Pond about the same time with the In- 
dian, notwithstanding the velocity with 
which he moved, our route being the 
most direct. The pond was two or three 
miles long. 

At the outlet was another dam, at 
which we stopped and picked raspberries, 
while the Indian went down the stream a 
half-mile through the forest, to see what 
he had got to contend with. There was 
a deserted log camp here, apparently used 
the previous winter, with its " hovel " or 
barn for cattle. In the hut was a large 
fir-twig bed, raised two feet from the 
floor, occupying a large part of the single 
apartment, a long narrow table against 
the wall, with a stout log bench before 
it, and above the table a small window, 
the only one there was, which admitted 
a feeble light. It was a simple and strong 
fort erected against the cold. 

We got our dinner on the shore, on 
the upper side of the dam. As we were 
sitting by our fire, concealed by the earth 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 129 

bank of the dam, a long line of shel- 
drakes, half grown, came waddling over 
it from the water below, passing within 
about a rod of us, so that we could 
almost have caught them in our hands. 
They were very abundant on all the 
streams and lakes which we visited, and 
every two or three hours they would rush 
away in a long string over the water be- 
fore us, twenty to fifty of them at once, 
rarely ever flying, but running with great 
rapidity up or down the stream, even in 
the midst of the most violent rapids, and 
apparently as fast up as down. 

An Indian at Oldtown had told us that 
we should be obliged to carry ten miles 
between Telos Lake on the St. John and 
Second Lake on the East Branch of the 
Penobscot; but the lumberers whom we 
met assured us that there would not be 
more than a mile of carry. It turned out 
that the Indian was nearest right, as far as 
we were concerned. However, if one of 
us could have assisted the Indian in man- 



130 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

aging the canoe in the rapids, we might 
have run the greater part of the way; but 
as he was alone in the management of the 
canoe in such places we were obliged to 
walk the greater part. 

My companion and I carried a good 
part of the baggage on our shoulders, while 
the Indian took that which would be least 
injured by wet in the canoe. We did not 
know when we should see him again, for 
he had not been this way since the canal 
was cut. He agreed to stop when he got 
to smooth water, come up and find our 
path if he could, and halloo for us, and 
after waiting a reasonable time go on and 
try again — and we were to look out in 
like manner for him. 

He commenced by running through the 
sluiceway and over the dam, as usual, stand- 
ing up in his tossing canoe, and was soon 
out of sight behind a point in a wild gorge. 
This Webster Stream is well known to 
lumbermen as a difficult one. It is exceed- 
ingly rapid and rocky, and also shallow. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 131 

and can hardly be considered navigable, 
unless that may mean that what is launched 
in it is sure to be carried swiftly down it, 
though it may be dashed to pieces by the 
way. It is somewhat like navigating a thun- 
der-spout. With commonly an irresistible 
force urging you on, you have got to choose 
your own course each moment between 
the rocks and shallows, and to get into it, 
moving forward always with the utmost 
possible moderation, and often holding on, 
if you can, that you may inspect the rapids 
before you. 

By the Indian's direction we took an 
old path on the south side, which appeared 
to keep down the stream. It was a wild 
wood-path, with a few tracks of oxen 
which had been driven over it, probably 
to some old camp clearing for pasturage, 
mingled with the tracks of moose which 
had lately used it. We kept on steadily for 
about an hour without putting down our 
packs, occasionally winding around or 
climbing over a fallen tree, for the most 



132 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

part far out of sight and hearing of the 
river; till, after walking about three miles, 
we were glad to find that the path came 
to the river again at an old camp-ground, 
where there was a small opening in the 
forest, at which we paused. 

Swiftly as the shallow and rocky river 
ran here, a continuous rapid with dancing 
waves, I saw, as I sat on the shore, a long 
string of sheldrakes, which something 
scared, run up the opposite side of the 
stream by me, just touching the surface of 
the waves, and getting an impulse from 
them as they flowed from under them; 
but they soon came back, driven by the 
Indian, who had fallen a little behind us 
on account of the windings. He shot 
round a point just above, and came to land 
by us with considerable water in his canoe. 
He had found it, as he said, " very strong 
water," and had been obliged to land once 
before to empty out what he had taken in. 

He complained that it strained him to 
paddle so hard in order to keep his canoe 




Coming Down the Rapids 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 133 

straight in its course, having no one in the 
bows to aid him, and, shallow as it was, 
said that it would be no joke to upset there, 
for the force of the water was such that he 
had as lief I would strike him over the 
head with a paddle as have that water 
strike him. Seeing him come out of that 
gap was as if you should pour water down 
an inclined and zigzag trough, then drop 
a nutshell into it, and, taking a short cut 
to the bottom, get there in time to see it 
come out, notwithstanding the rush and 
tumult, right side up, and only partly full 
of water. 

After a moment's breathing-space, while 
I held his canoe, he was soon out of sight 
again around another bend, and we, shoul- 
dering our packs, resumed our course. 

Before going a mile we heard the Indian 
calling to us. He had come up through the 
woods and along the path to find us, hav- 
ing reached sufficiently smooth water to 
warrant his taking us in. The shore was 
about one fourth of a mile distant through 



134 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

a dense, dark forest, and as he led us back 
to it, winding rapidly about to the right 
and left, I had the curiosity to look down 
carefully and found that he was following 
his steps backward. I could only occasion- 
ally perceive his trail in the moss, and yet 
he did not appear to look down nor hesi- 
tate an instant, but led us out exactly to 
his canoe. This surprised me, for without 
a compass, or the sight or noise of the 
river to guide us, we could not have kept 
our course many minutes, and could have 
retraced our steps but a short distance, with 
a great deal of pains and very slowly, using 
a laborious circumspection. But it was evi- 
dent that he could go back through the 
forest wherever he had been during the 
day. 

After this rough walking in the dark 
woods it was an agreeable change to glide 
down the rapid river in the canoe once 
more. This river, though still very swift, 
was almost perfectly smooth here, and 
showed a very visible declivity, a regularly 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 135 

inclined plane, for several miles, like a 
mirror set a little aslant, on which we 
coasted down. It was very exhilarating, 
and the perfection of traveling, the coast- 
ing down this inclined mirror between two 
evergreen forests edged with lofty dead 
white pines, sometimes slanted half-way 
over the stream. I saw some monsters 
there, nearly destitute of branches, and 
scarcely diminishing in diameter for eighty 
or ninety feet. 

As we were thus swept along, our In- 
dian repeated in a deliberate and drawling 
tone the words, " Daniel Webster, great 
lawyer," apparently reminded of him by the 
name of the stream, and he described his 
calling on him once in Boston at what he 
supposed was his boarding-house. He had 
no business with him but merely went to 
pay his respects, as we should say. It was 
on the day after Webster delivered his 
Bunker Hill oration. The first time he 
called he waited till he was tired without 
seeing him, and then went away. The 



136 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

next time he saw him go by the door of 
the room in which he was waiting several 
times, in his shirt-sleeves, without notic- 
ing him. He thought that if he had come 
to see Indians they would not have treated 
him so. At length, after very long delay, 
he came in, walked toward him, and asked 
in a loud voice, gruffly, " What do you 
want?" and he, thinking at first, by the 
motion of his hand, that he was going to 
strike him, said to himself, "You'd bet- 
ter take care; if you try that I shall know 
what to do." 

He did not like him, and declared that 
all he said "was not worth talk about a 
musquash." 

Coming to falls and rapids, our easy 
progress was suddenly terminated. The In- 
dian went alongshore to inspect the water, 
while we climbed over the rocks, picking 
berries. When the Indian came back, he 
remarked, " You got to walk ; ver' strong 
water." 

So, taking out his canoe, he launched 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 137 

it again below the falls, and was soon 
out of sight. At such times he would step 
into the canoe, take up his paddle, and 
start off, looking far down-stream as if 
absorbing all the intelligence of forest 
and stream into himself. We meanwhile 
scrambled along the shore with our packs, 
without any path. This was the last of 
our boating for the day. 

The Indian now got along much faster 
than we, and waited for us from time to 
time. I found here the only cool spring 
that I drank at anywhere on this excur- 
sion, a little water filling a hollow in the 
sandy bank. It was a quite memorable 
event, and due to the elevation of the 
country, for wherever else we had been 
the water in the rivers and the streams 
emptying in was dead and warm, com- 
pared with that of a mountainous region. 
It was very bad walking along the shore 
over fallen and drifted trees and bushes, 
and rocks, from time to time swinging 
ourselves round over the water, or else 



138 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

taking to a gravel bar or going inland. At 
one place, the Indian being ahead, I was 
obliged to take off all my clothes in order 
to ford a small but deep stream emptying 
in, while my companion, who was inland, 
found a rude bridge, high up in the woods, 
and I saw no more of him for some time. 
I saw there very fresh moose tracks, and 
I passed one white pine log, lodged in the 
forest near the edge of the stream, which 
was quite five feet in diameter at the butt. 
Shortly after this I overtook the Indian 
at the edge of some burnt land, which ex- 
tended three or four miles at least, begin- 
ning about three miles above Second Lake, 
which we were expecting to reach that 
night. This burnt region was still more 
rocky than before, but, though compara- 
tively open, we could not yet see the lake. 
Not having seen my companion for some 
time, I climbed with the Indian a high 
rock on the edge of the river forming a 
narrow ridge only a foot or two wide at 
top, in order to look for him. After calling 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 139 

many times I at length heard him answer 
from a considerable distance inland, he 
having taken a trail which led off from the 
river, and being now in search of the river 
again. Seeing a much higher rock of the 
same character about one third of a mile 
farther down-stream, I proceeded toward 
it through the burnt land, in order to 
look for the lake from its summit, and 
hallooing all the while that my com- 
panion might join me on the way. 

Before we came together I noticed 
where a moose, which possibly I had 
scared by my shouting, had apparently 
just run along a large rotten trunk of a 
pine, which made a bridge thirty or forty 
feet long over a hollow, as convenient for 
him as for me. The tracks were as large 
as those of an ox, but an ox could not 
have crossed there. This burnt land was 
an exceedingly wild and desolate region. 
Judging by the weeds and sprouts, it ap- 
peared to have been burnt about two years 
before. It was covered with charred 



140 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

trunks, either prostrate or standing, which 
crocked our clothes and hands. Great 
shells of trees, sometimes unburnt with- 
out, or burnt on one side only, but black 
within, stood twenty or forty feet high. 
The fire had run up inside, as in a chim- 
ney, leaving the sapwood. There were 
great fields of fireweed, which presented 
masses of pink. Intermixed with these 
were blueberry and raspberry bushes. 

Having crossed a second rocky ridge, 
when I was beginning to ascend the third, 
the Indian, whom I had left on the shore, 
beckoned to me to come to him, but I 
made sign that I would first ascend the 
rock before me. My companion accom- 
panied me to the top. 

There was a remarkable series of these 
great rock-waves revealed by the burning ; 
breakers, as it were. No wonder that the 
river that found its way through them was 
rapid and obstructed by falls. We could 
see the lake over the woods, and that the 
river made an abrupt turn southward around 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 141 

the end of the cliff on which we stood, 
and that there was an important fall in it 
a short distance below us. I could see the 
canoe a hundred rods behind, but now on 
the opposite shore, and supposed that the 
Indian had concluded to take out and carry 
round some bad rapids on that side, but after 
waiting a while I could still see nothing 
of him, and I began to suspect that he had 
gone inland to look for the lake from some 
hilltop on that side. This proved to be 
the case, for after I had started to return 
to the canoe I heard a faint halloo, and 
descried him on the top of a distant rocky 
hill. I began to return along the ridge 
toward the angle in the river. My com- 
panion inquired where I was going ; to 
which I answered that I was going far 
enough back to communicate with the 
Indian. 

When we reached the shore the Indian 
appeared from out the woods on the oppo- 
site side, but on account of the roar of the 
water it was difficult to communicate with 



142 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

him. He kept along the shore westward 
to his canoe, while we stopped at the an- 
gle where the stream turned southward 
around the precipice. I said to my com- 
panion that we would keep along the shore 
and keep the Indian in sight. We started 
to do so, being close together, the Indian 
behind us having launched his canoe again, 
but I saw the latter beckoning to me, and 
I called to my companion, who had just 
disappeared behind large rocks at the point 
of the precipice on his way down the 
stream, that I was going to help the In- 
dian. 

I did so — helped get the canoe over a 
fall, lying with my breast over a rock, and 
holding one end while he received it be- 
low — and within ten or fifteen minutes I 
was back at the point where the river 
turned southward, while Polis glided down 
the river alone, parallel with me. But to 
my surprise, when I rounded the preci- 
pice, though the shore was bare of trees, 
without rocks, for a quarter of a mile at 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 143 

least, my companion was not to be seen. 
It was as if he had sunk into the earth. 
This was the more unaccountable to me, 
because I knew that his feet were very 
sore, and that he wished to keep with the 
party. 

I hastened along, hallooing and search- 
ing for him, thinking he might be con- 
cealed behind a rock, but the Indian had 
got along faster in his canoe, till he was ar- 
rested by the falls, about a quarter of a mile 
below. He then landed, and said that we 
could go no farther that night. The sun was 
setting, and on account of falls and rapids 
we should be obliged to leave this river 
and carry a good way into another farther 
east. The first thing then was to find my 
companion, for I was now very much 
alarmed about him, and I sent the Indian 
along the shore down-stream, which be- 
gan to be covered with unburnt wood 
again just below the falls, while I searched 
backward about the precipice which we 
had passed. 



144 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

The Indian showed some unwilHngness 
to exert himself, complaining that he was 
very tired in consequence of his day's 
work, that it had strained him getting 
down so many rapids alone; but he went 
off calling somewhat like an owl. I re- 
membered that my companion was near- 
sighted, and I feared that he had either 
fallen from the precipice, or fainted and 
sunk down amid the rocks beneath it. I 
shouted and searched above and below this 
precipice in the twilight till I could not 
see, expecting nothing less than to find his 
body beneath it. For half an hour I antic- 
ipated and believed only the worst. I 
thought what I should do the next day if 
I did not find him, and how his relatives 
would feel if I should return without him. 
I felt that if he were really lost away from 
the river there, it would be a desperate 
undertaking to find him ; and where were 
they who could help you ? What would it 
be to raise the country, where there were 
only two or three camps, twenty or thirty 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 145 

miles apart, and no road, and perhaps no- 
body at home? 

I rushed down from this precipice to 
the canoe in order to fire the Indian's gun, 
but found that my companion had the 
caps. When the Indian returned he said 
that he had seen his tracks once or twice 
along the shore. This encouraged me very 
much. He objected to firing the gun, say- 
ing that if my companion heard it, which 
was not likely, on account of the roar of 
the stream, it would tempt him to come 
toward us, and he might break his neck 
in the dark. For the same reason we re- 
frained from lighting a fire on the highest 
rock. I proposed that we should both 
keep down the stream to the lake, or that 
I should go at any rate, but the Indian 
said: "No use, can't do anything in the 
dark. Come morning, then we find 'em. 
No harm — he make 'em camp. No bad 
animals here — warm night — he well off 
as you and I." 

The darkness in the woods was by this 



146 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

so thick that it decided the question. We 
must camp where we were. I knew that 
he had his knapsack, with blankets and 
matches, and, if well, would fare no worse 
than we, except that he would have no 
supper nor society. 

This side of the river being so encum- 
bered with rocks, we crossed to the east- 
ern or smoother shore, and proceeded to 
camp there, within two or three rods of 
the falls. We pitched no tent, but lay on 
the sand, putting a few handfuls of grass 
and twigs under us, there being no ever- 
green at hand. For fuel we had some of 
the charred stumps. Our various bags of 
provisions had got quite wet in the rapids, 
and I arranged them about the lire to dry. 
The fall close by was the principal one on 
this stream, and it shook the earth un- 
der us. It was a cool, dewy night. I lay 
awake a good deal from anxiety. From 
time to time I fancied that I heard his 
voice calling through the roar of the falls 
from the opposite side of the river; but 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 147 

it is doubtful if we could have heard him 
across the stream there. Sometimes I 
doubted whether the Indian had really- 
seen his tracks, since he manifested an 
unwillingness to make much of a search. 
It was the most wild and desolate re- 
gion we had camped in, where, if any- 
where, one might expect to meet with 
befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the 
squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The 
moon in her first quarter, in the fore part 
of the night, setting over the bare rocky 
hills garnished with tall, charred, and 
hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to 
reveal the desolation. 



VIII 

THURSDAY, JULY 30 

1 AROUSED the Indian early to go 
in search of our companion, expecting 
to find him within a mile or two, farther 
down the stream. The Indian wanted his 
breakfast first, but I reminded him that 
my companion had had neither breakfast 
nor supper. We were obliged first to 
carry our canoe and baggage over into 
another stream, the main East Branch, 
about three fourths of a mile distant, for 
Webster Stream was no farther navigable. 
We went twice over this carry, and the 
dewy bushes wet us through like water 
up to the middle. I hallooed from time 
to time, though I had little expectation 
that I could be heard over the roar of the 
rapids. 

In going over this portage the last time, 
the Indian, who was before me with the 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 149 

canoe on his head, stumbled and fell 
heavily once, and lay for a moment silent 
as if in pain. I hastily stepped forward to 
help him, asking if he was much hurt, 
but after a moment's pause, without re- 
plying, he sprang up and went forward. 

We had launched our canoe and gone 
but little way down the East Branch, 
when I heard an answering shout from 
my companion, and soon after saw him 
standing on a point where there was a 
clearing a quarter of a mile below, and 
the smoke of his fire was rising near by. 
Before I saw him I naturally shouted 
again and again, but the Indian curtly 
remarked, "He hears you," as if once 
was enough. 

It was just below the mouth of Web- 
ster Stream. When we arrived he was 
smoking his pipe, and said that he had 
passed a pretty comfortable night, though 
it was rather cold, on account of the dew. 
It appeared that when we stood together 
the previous evening, and I was shouting 



ISO CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

to the Indian across the river, he, being 
nearsighted, had not seen the Indian nor 
his canoe, and when I went back to the 
Indian's assistance, did not see which way 
I went, and supposed that we were below 
and not above him, and so, making haste 
to catch up, he ran away from us. Hav- 
ing reached this clearing, a mile or more 
below our camp, the night overtook him, 
and he made a fire in a little hollow, and 
lay down by it in his blanket, still think- 
ing that we were ahead of him. 

He had stuck up the remnant of a 
lumberer's shirt, found on the point, on a 
pole by the waterside for a signal, and 
attached a note to it to inform us that he 
had gone on to the lake, and that if he 
did not find us there he would be back in 
a couple of hours. If he had not found 
us soon he had some thoughts of going 
back in search of the solitary hunter 
whom we had met at Telos Lake, ten 
miles behind, and, if successful, hire him 
to take him to Bangor. But if this hunter 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 151 

had moved as fast as we, he would have 
been twenty miles off by this time, and 
who could guess in what direction ? It 
would have been like looking for a needle 
in a haymow to search for him in these 
woods. He had been considering how 
long he could live on berries alone. 

We all had good appetites for the 
breakfast which we made haste to cook 
here, and then, having partially dried our 
clothes, we glided swiftly down the wind- 
ing stream toward Second Lake. 

As the shores became flatter with fre- 
quent sandbars, and the stream more wind- 
ing in the lower land near the lake, elms 
and ash trees made their appearance; also 
the wild yellow lily, some of whose bulbs 
I collected for a soup. On some ridges 
the burnt land extended as far as the lake. 
This was a very beautiful lake, two or three 
miles long, with high mountains on the 
southwest side. The morning was a bright 
one, and perfectly still, the lake as smooth 
as glass, we making the only ripple as we 



152 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

paddled into it. The dark mountains 
about it were seen through a glaucous 
mist, and the white stems of canoe birches 
mingled with the other woods around it. 
The thrush sang on the distant shore, 
and the laugh of some loons, sporting in 
a concealed western bay, as if inspired 
by the morning, came distinct over the 
lake to us. The beauty of the scene may 
have been enhanced to our eyes by the 
fact that we had just come together after 
a night of some anxiety. 

Having paddled down three quarters 
of the lake, we came to a standstill while 
my companion let down for fish. In the 
midst of our dreams of giant lake trout, 
even then supposed to be nibbling, our fish- 
erman drew up a diminutive red perch, 
and we took up our paddles. 

It was not apparent where the outlet 
of the lake was, and while the Indian 
thought it was in one direction, I thought 
it was in another. He said, " I bet you 
fourpence it is there," but he still held on 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 153 

in my direction, which proved to be the 
right one. 

As we were approaching the outlet he 
suddenly exclaimed, "Moose! moose!" 
and told us to be still. He put a cap on 
his gun, and, standing up in the stern, 
rapidly pushed the canoe straight toward 
the shore and the moose. It was a cow 
moose, about thirty rods off, standing in 
the water by the side of the outlet, partly 
behind some fallen timber and bushes, 
and at that distance she did not look very 
large. She was flapping her large ears, 
and from time to time poking off the 
flies with her nose from some part of her 
body. She did not appear much alarmed 
by our neighborhood, only occasionally 
turned her head and looked straight at 
us, and then gave her attention to the 
flies again. As we approached nearer she 
got out of the water, stood higher, and 
regarded us more suspiciously. 

Polis pushed the canoe steadily forward 
in the shallow water, but the canoe soon 



154 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

grounded in the mud eight or ten rods 
distant from the moose, and the Indian 
seized his gun. After standing still a mo- 
ment she turned so as to expose her side, 
and he improved this moment to fire, 
over our heads. She thereupon moved off 
eight or ten rods at a moderate pace 
across a shallow bay to the opposite shore, 
and she stood still again while the In- 
dian hastily loaded and fired twice at her, 
without her moving. My companion, 
who passed him his caps and bullets, said 
that Polis was as excited as a boy of fif- 
teen, that his hand trembled, and he once 
put his ramrod back upside down. 

The Indian now pushed quickly and 
quietly back, and a long distance round, 
in order to get into the outlet, — for he 
had fired over the neck of a peninsula 
between it and the lake, — till we ap- 
proached the place where the moose had 
stood, when he exclaimed, " She is a 
goner ! " 

There, to be sure, she lay perfectly 



Y""^- 



i^ 



T 



Shooting the Moose 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 155 

dead, just where she had stood to receive 
the last shots. Using a tape, I found that 
the moose measured six feet from the 
shoulder to the tip of the hoof, and was 
eight feet long. 

Polis, preparing to skin the moose, 
asked me to help him find a stone on 
which to sharpen his large knife. It being 
flat alluvial ground, covered with red 
maples, etc., this was no easy matter. We 
searched far and wide a long time till at 
length I found a flat kind of slate stone, 
on which he soon made his knife very- 
sharp. 

While he was skinning the moose I 
proceeded to ascertain what kind of fishes 
were to be found in the sluggish and 
muddy outlet. The greatest difficulty was 
to find a pole. It was almost impossible 
to find a slender, straight pole ten or 
twelve feet long in those woods. You 
might search half an hour in vain. They 
are commonly spruce, arbor-vits, fir, etc., 
short, stout, and branchy, and do not 



156 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

make good iishpoles, even after you have 
patiently cut off all their tough and scraggy 
branches. The fishes were red perch and 
chivin. 

The Indian, having cut off a large piece 
of sirloin, the upper lip, and the tongue, 
wrapped them in the hide, and placed 
them in the bottom of the canoe, observ- 
ing that there was " one man," meaning 
the weight of one. Our load had pre- 
viously been reduced some thirty pounds, 
but a hundred pounds were now added, 
which made our quarters still more nar- 
row, and considerably increased the dan- 
ger on the lakes and rapids as well as the 
labor of the carries. The skin was ours 
according to custom, since the Indian was 
in our employ, but we did not think of 
claiming it. He being a skillful dresser 
of moose-hides would make it worth seven 
or eight dollars to him, as I was told. He 
said that he sometimes earned fifty or sixty 
dollars in a day at them ; he had killed 
ten moose in one day, though the skin- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 157 

ning and all took two days. This was the 
way he had got his property. 

We continued along the outlet through 
a swampy region, by a long, winding dead- 
water, very much choked up by wood, 
where we were obliged to land sometimes 
in order to get the canoe over a log. It 
was hard to find any channel, and we did 
not know but we should be lost in the 
swamp. It abounded in ducks, as usual. 
At length we reached Grand Lake. 

We stopped to dine on an interesting 
rocky island, securing our canoe to the 
cliffy shore. Here was a good opportunity 
to dry our dewy blankets on the open 
sunny rock. Indians had recently camped 
here, and accidentally burned over the 
western end of the island. Polls picked 
up a gun-case of blue broadcloth, and 
said that he knew the Indian it belonged 
to and would carry it to him. His tribe is 
not so large but he may know all its 
effects. We proceeded to make a fire and 
cook our dinner amid some pines. 



IS8 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

I saw where the Indians had made 
canoes in a Httle secluded hollow in the 
woods, on the top of the rock, where they 
were out of the wind, and large piles of 
whittlings remained. This must have been 
a favorite resort of their ancestors, and, 
indeed, we found here the point of an ar- 
row-head, such as they have not used for 
two centuries and now know not how to 
make. The Indian picked up a yellowish 
curved bone by the side of our fireplace 
and asked me to guess what it was. It 
was one of the upper incisors of a beaver, 
on which some party had feasted within 
a year or two. I found also most of the 
teeth and the skull. We here dined on 
fried moose meat. 

Our blankets being dry, we set out again, 
the Indian, as usual, having left his gazette 
on a tree. We paddled southward, keeping 
near the western shore. The Indian did 
not know exactly where the outlet was, 
and he went feeling his way by a middle 
course between two probable points, from 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 159 

which he could diverge either way at last 
without losing much distance. In ap- 
proaching the south shore, as the clouds 
looked gusty and the waves ran pretty high, 
we so steered as to get partly under the lee 
of an island, though at a great distance 
from it. 

I could not distinguish the outlet till we 
were almost in it, and heard the water fall- 
ing over the dam there. Here was a con- 
siderable fall, and a very substantial dam, 
but no sign of a cabin or camp. 

While we loitered here Polls took oc- 
casion to cut with his big knife some of 
the hair from his moose-hide, and so light- 
ened and prepared it for drying. I noticed 
at several old Indian camps in the woods 
the pile of hair which they had cut from 
their hides. 

Having carried over the dam, he darted 
down the rapids, leaving us to walk for a 
mile or more, where for the most part 
there was no path, but very thick and diffi- 
cult traveling near the stream. He would 



i6o CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

call to let us know where he was waiting 
for us with his canoe, when, on account of 
the windings of the stream, we did not 
know where the shore was, but he did not 
call often enough, forgetting that we were 
not Indians. He seemed to be very saving 
of his breath — yet he would be surprised 
if we went by, or did not strike the right 
spot. This was not because he was un- 
accommodating, but a proof of superior 
manners. Indians like to get along with 
the least possible communication and ado. 
He was really paying us a great compli- 
ment all the while, thinking that we pre- 
ferred a hint to a kick. 

At length, climbing over the willows 
and fallen trees, when this was easier than 
to go round or under them, we overtook 
the canoe, and glided down the stream in 
smooth but swift water for several miles. 
I here observed, as at Webster Stream, that 
the river was a smooth and regularly in- 
clined plane down which we coasted. 

We decided to camp early that we might 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH i6i 

have ample time before dark. So we 
stopped at the first favorable shore, where 
there was a narrow gravelly beach, some 
five miles below the outlet of the lake. 
Two steps from the water on either side, 
and you come to the abrupt, bushy, and 
rooty, if not turfy, edge of the bank, four 
or five feet high, where the interminable 
forest begins, as if the stream had but just 
cut its way through it. 

It is surprising on stepping ashore any- 
where into this unbroken wilderness to see 
so often, at least within a few rods of the 
river, the marks of the axe, made by lum- 
berers who have either camped here or 
driven logs past in previous springs. You 
will see perchance where they have cut 
large chips from a tall white pine stump 
for their fire. 

While we were pitching the camp and 
getting supper, the Indian cut the rest of 
the hair from his moose-hide, and pro- 
ceeded to extend it vertically on a tem- 
porary frame between two small trees, half 



i62 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

a dozen feet from the opposite side of the 
fire, lashing and stretching it with arbor- 
vitae bark. Asking for a new kind of tea, 
he made us some pretty good of the check- 
erberry, which covered the ground, drop- 
ping a little bunch of it tied up with cedar 
bark into the kettle. 

After supper he put on the moose 
tongue and lips to boil. He showed me 
how to write on the under side of birch 
bark with a black spruce twig, which is 
hard and tough and can be brought to a 
point. 

The Indian wandered off into the woods 
a short distance just before night, and, com- 
ing back, said, " Me found great treasure." 

"What's that? "we asked. 

" Steel traps, under a log, thirty or forty, 
I did n't count 'em. I guess Indian work 
— worth three dollars apiece." 

It was a singular coincidence that he 
should have chanced to walk to and look 
under that particular log in that trackless 
forest. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 163 

I saw chivin and chub in the stream 
when washing my hands, but my com- 
panion tried in vain to catch them. I 
heard the sound of bullfrogs from a swamp 
on the opposite side. 

You commonly make your camp just 
at sundown, and are collecting wood, get- 
ting your supper, or pitching your tent 
while the shades of night are gathering 
around and adding to the already dense 
gloom of the forest. You have no time to 
explore or look around you before it is 
dark. You may penetrate half a dozen 
rods farther into that twilight wilderness 
after some dry bark to kindle your fire with, 
and wonder what mysteries lie hidden still 
deeper in it, or you may run down to the 
shore for a dipper of water, and get a 
clearer view for a short distance up or 
down the stream, and while you stand 
there, see a fish leap, or duck alight in the 
river, or hear a thrush or robin sing in the 
woods. 

But there is no sauntering off to see the 



1 64 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

country. Ten or fifteen rods seems a great 
way from your companions, and you come 
back with the air of a much traveled man, 
as from a long journey, with adventures to 
relate, though you may have heard the 
crackling of the fire all the while — and at 
a hundred rods you might be lost past re- 
covery and have to camp out. It is all 
mossy and moosey. In some of those dense 
fir and spruce woods there is hardly room 
for the smoke to go up. The trees are a 
standing night, and every fir and spruce 
which you fell is a plume plucked from 
night's raven wing. Then at night the 
general stillness is more impressive than 
any sound, but occasionally you hear the 
note of an owl farther or nearer in the 
woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman 
cry of the loons at their unearthly revels. 
To-night the Indian lay between the fire 
and his stretched moose-hide, to avoid 
mosquitoes. Indeed, he also made a small 
smoky fire of damp leaves at his head and 
feet, and then as usual rolled up his head 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 165 

in his blanket. We with our veils and our 
wash were tolerably comfortable, but it 
would be difficult to pursue any sedentary 
occupation in the woods at this season; 
you cannot see to read much by the light 
of a fire through a veil in the evening, nor 
handle pencil and paper well with gloves 
or anointed fingers. 



IX 

FRIDAY, JULY 3 1 

WE had smooth but swift water for 
a considerable distance, where we 
glided rapidly along, scaring up ducks and 
kingfishers. But, as usual, our smooth prog- 
ress ere long come to an end, and we were 
obliged to carry canoe and all about half 
a mile down the right bank around some 
rapids or falls. It required sharp eyes some- 
times to tell which side was the carry, be- 
fore you went over the falls, but Polis never 
failed to land us rightly. The raspberries 
were particularly abundant and large here, 
and all hands went to eating them, the 
Indian remarking on their size. 

Often on bare rocky carries the trail 
was so indistinct that I repeatedly lost it, 
but when I walked behind him I observed 
that he could keep it almost like a hound, 
and rarely hesitated, or, if he paused a mo- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 167 

ment on a bare rock, his eye immediately 
detected some sign which would have es- 
caped me. Frequently we found no path 
at all at these places, and were to him un- 
accountably delayed. He would only say 
it was "ver' strange." 

We had heard of a Grand Fall on this 
stream, and thought that each fall we came 
to must be it, but after christening several 
in succession with this name we gave up 
the search. There were more Grand or 
Petty Falls than I can remember. 

I cannot tell how many times we had 
to walk on account of falls or rapids. We 
were expecting all the while that the river 
would take a final leap and get to smooth 
water, but there was no improvement this 
forenoon. However, the carries were an 
agreeable variety. So surely as we stepped 
out of the canoe and stretched our legs we 
found ourselves in a blueberry and rasp- 
berry garden, each side of our rocky trail 
being lined with one or both. There was 
not a carry on the main East Branch where 



1 68 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

we did not find an abundance of both these 
berries, for these were the rockiest places 
and partially cleared, such as these plants 
prefer, and there had been none to gather 
the finest before us. 

We bathed and dined at the foot of one 
of these carries. It was the Indian who 
commonly reminded us that it was dinner- 
time, sometimes even by turning the prow 
to the shore. He once made an indirect, 
but lengthy apology, by saying that we 
might think it strange, but that one who 
worked hard all day was very particular to 
have his dinner in good season. At the 
most considerable fall on this stream, 
when I was walking over the carry close 
behind the Indian, he observed a track 
on the rock, which was but slightly cov- 
ered with soil, and, stooping, muttered, 
"Caribou." 

When we returned, he observed a much 
larger track near the same place, where 
some animal's foot had sunk into a small 
hollow in the rock, partly filled with grass 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 169 

and earth, and he exclaimed with surprise, 
"What that?" 

"Well, what is it?" I asked. 

Stooping and laying his hand in it, he 
answered with a mysterious air, and in a 
half-whisper, " Devil [that is, Indian devil, 
or cougar] — ledges about here — very bad 
animal — pull 'em rocks all to pieces." 

"How long since it was made?" I 
asked. 

"To-day or yesterday," said he. 

We spent at least half the time in walk- 
ing to-day. The Indian, being alone, com- 
monly ran down far below the foot of the 
carries before he waited for us. The carry- 
paths themselves were more than usually 
indistinct, often the route being revealed 
only by the countless small holes in the 
fallen timber made by the tacks in the 
drivers' boots. It was a tangled and per- 
plexing thicket, through which we stum- 
bled and threaded our way, and when we 
had finished a mile of it, our starting-point 
seemed far away. We were glad that we 



I70 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

had not got to walk to Bangor along the 
banks of this river, which would be a jour- 
ney of more than a hundred miles. Think 
of the denseness of the forest, the fallen 
trees and rocks, the windings of the river, 
the streams emptying in, and the frequent 
swamps to be crossed. It made you shud- 
der. Yet the Indian from time to time 
pointed out to us where he had thus crept 
along day after day when he was a boy of 
ten, and in a starving condition- 
He had been hunting far north of this 
with two grown Indians. The winter 
came on unexpectedly early, and the ice 
compelled them to leave their canoe at 
Grand Lake, and walk down the bank. 
They shouldered their furs and started for 
Oldtown. The snow was not deep enough 
for snowshoes, or to cover the inequalities 
of the ground. Polls was soon too weak to 
carry any burden, but he managed to catch 
one otter. This was the most they all had 
to eat on this journey, and he remem- 
bered how good the yellow lily roots were. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 171 

made into a soup with the otter oil. He 
shared this food equally with the other 
two, but being so small he suffered much 
more than they. He waded through the 
Mattawamkeag at its mouth, when it was 
freezing cold and came up to his chin, 
and he, being very weak and emaciated, 
expected to be swept away. The first 
house which they reached was at Lincoln, 
and thereabouts they met a white teamster 
with supplies, who, seeing their condition, 
gave them as much as they could eat. For 
six months after getting home he was very 
low and did not expect to live, and was 
perhaps always the worse for it. 

For seven or eight miles below that 
succession of "Grand" falls the aspect of 
the banks as well as the character of the 
stream was changed. After passing a trib- 
utary from the northeast we had swift 
smooth water. Low grassy banks and 
muddy shores began. Many elms as well 
as maples and more ash trees overhung the 
stream and supplanted the spruce. 



172 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

Mosquitoes, black flies, etc., pursued us 
in mid-channel, and we were glad some- 
times to get into violent rapids, for then we 
escaped them. As we glided swiftly down 
the inclined plane of the river, a great cat 
owl launched itself away from a stump on 
the bank, and flew heavily across the 
stream, and the Indian, as usual, imitated 
its note. Soon afterward a white-headed 
eagle sailed down the stream before us. 
We drove him several miles, while we 
were looking for a good place to camp, — 
for we expected to be overtaken by a 
shower, — and still we could distinguish 
him by his white tail, sailing away from 
time to time from some tree by the shore 
still farther down the stream. Some she- 
corways being surprised by us, a part of 
them dived, and we passed directly over 
them, and could trace their course here 
and there by a bubble on the surface, but 
we did not see them come up. 

It was some time before we found a 
camping-place, for the shore was either 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 173 

too grassy and muddy, where mosquitoes 
abounded, or too steep a hillside. We at 
length found a place to our minds, where, 
in a very dense spruce wood above a grav- 
elly shore, there seemed to be but few in- 
sects. The trees were so thick that we 
were obliged to clear a space to build our 
fire and lie down in, and the young spruce 
trees that were left were like the wall of 
an apartment rising around us. We were 
obliged to pull ourselves up a steep bank 
to get there. But the place which you 
have selected for your camp, though never 
so rough and grim, begins at once to have 
its attractions, and becomes a very center 
of civilization to you : " Home is home, 
be it never so homely." 

The mosquitoes were numerous, and 
the Indian complained a good deal, though 
he lay, as the night before, between three 
fires and his stretched hide. As I sat on a 
stump by the fire with a veil and gloves 
on, trying to read, he observed, " I make 
you candle," and in a minute he took a 



174 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

piece of birch bark about two inches wide 
and rolled it hard, like an allumette ' fifteen 
inches long, lit it, fixed it by the other end 
horizontally in a split stick three feet high, 
and stuck it in the ground, turning the 
blazing end to the wind, and telling me to 
snuff it from time to time. It answered the 
purpose of a candle pretty well. 

I noticed, as I had before, that there 
was a lull among the mosquitoes about 
midnight, and that they began again in 
the morning. Apparently they need rest 
as well as we. Few, if any, creatures are 
equally active all night. As soon as it was 
light I saw, through my veil, that the in- 
side of the tent about our heads was quite 
blackened with myriads, and their com- 
bined hum was almost as bad to endure as 
their stings. I had an uncomfortable night 
on this account, though I am not sure that 
one succeeded in his attempt to sting me. 

'A match. In this case an old-fashioned "spill," or 
lamplighter, made by twisting a piece of paper, into a long, 
tight spiral roll. 



X 

SATURDAY, SUNDAY, MONDAY 
AUGUST 1-3 

I CAUGHT two or three large red 
chivin within twenty feet of the camp, 
which, added to the moose tongue that 
had been left in the kettle boiling over 
night, and to our other stores, made a 
sumptuous breakfast. The Indian made us 
some hemlock tea instead of coffee. This 
was tolerable, though he said it was not 
strong enough. It was interesting to see 
so simple a dish as a kettle of water with 
a handful of green hemlock sprigs in it 
boiling over the huge fire in the open air, 
the leaves fast losing their lively green color, 
and know that it was for our breakfast. 

We were glad to embark once more 
and leave some of the mosquitoes behind. 
We found that we had camped about a 
mile above Hunt's, which is the last house 



176 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

for those who ascend Katahdin on this side. 
We had expected to ascend it from this 
point, but my companion was obHged to 
give up this on account of sore feet. The 
Indian, however, suggested that perhaps he 
might get a pair of moccasins at this place, 
and that he could walk very easily in them 
without hurting his feet, wearing several 
pairs of stockings, and he said beside that 
they were so porous that when you had 
taken in water it all drained out in a little 
while. We stopped to get some sugar, but 
found that the family had moved away, 
and the house was unoccupied, except tem- 
porarily by some men who were getting 
the hay. I noticed a seine here stretched 
on the bank, which probably had been 
used to catch salmon. 

Just below this, on the west bank, we 
saw a moose-hide stretched, and with it a 
bearskin. The Indian said they belonged 
to Joe Aitteon,' but how he told I do not 

" Joe Aitteon was Thoreau's guide on the second of his 
three excursions into the Maine Woods. He was an Indian 
whose home was on the same island where Polis lived. 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 177 

know. He was probably hunting near and 
had left them for the day. Finding that 
we were going directly to Oldtown, he 
regretted that he had not taken more of 
the moose meat to his family, saying that 
in a short time, by drying it, he could 
have made it so light as to have brought 
away the greater part, leaving the bones. 
We once or twice inquired after the lip, 
which is a famous tidbit, but he said, 
" That go Oldtown for my old woman ; 
don't get it every day." 

Maples grew more and more numerous. 
It rained a little during the forenoon, and, 
as we expected a wetting, we stopped early 
and dined just above Whetstone Falls, 
about a dozen miles below Hunt's. My 
companion, having lost his pipe, asked the 
Indian if he could make him one. 

" Oh, yer," said he, and in a minute 
rolled up one of birch bark, telling him 
to wet the bowl from time to time. 

We carried round the falls. The dis- 
tance was about three fourths of a mile. 



178 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

When we had carried over one load, the 
Indian returned by the shore, and I by 
the path ; and though I made no particular 
haste I was nevertheless surprised to find 
him at the other end as soon as I. It was 
remarkable how easily he got over the 
worst ground. He said to me, " I take 
canoe and you take the rest, suppose you 
can keep along with me ? " 

I thought he meant that while he ran 
down the rapids I should keep along the 
shore, and be ready to assist him from time 
to time, as I had done before ; but as the 
walking would be very bad, I answered, 
" I suppose you will go too fast for me, 
but I will try." 

But I was to go by the path, he said. 
This I thought would not help the mat- 
ter, I should have so far to go to get to 
the riverside when he wanted me. But 
neither was this what he meant. He was 
proposing a race over the carry, and asked 
me if I thought I could keep along with 
him by the same path, adding that I must 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 179 

be pretty smart to do it. As his load, 
the canoe, would be much the heaviest 
and bulkiest, I thought that I ought to 
be able to do it, and said that I would try. 
So I proceeded to gather up the gun, axe, 
paddle, kettle, frying-pan, plates, dippers, 
carpets, etc., and while I was thus engaged 
he threw me his cowhide boots. " What, 
are these in the bargain?" I asked. 

" Oh, yer," said he ; but before I could 
make a bundle of my load I saw him dis- 
appearing over a hill with the canoe on 
his head. 

Hastily scraping the various articles to- 
gether, I started on the run, and immedi- 
ately went by him in the bushes, but I 
had no sooner left him out of sight in a 
rocky hollow than the greasy plates, dip- 
pers, etc., took to themselves wings, and 
while I was employed in gathering them 
up, he went by me; but, hastily pressing 
the sooty kettle to my side, I started once 
more, and, soon passing him again, I saw 
him no more on the carry. I do not men- 



i8o CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

tion this as anything of a feat, for it was 
but poor running on my part, and he was 
obliged to move with great caution for 
fear of breaking his canoe as well as his 
neck. When he made his appearance, puf- 
fing and panting like myself, in answer to 
my inquiries where he had been, he said, 
" Locks cut 'em feet," and, laughing, 
added, " Oh, me love to play sometimes." 

He said that he and his companions 
when they came to carries several miles 
long used to try who would get over first; 
each perhaps with a canoe on his head. I 
bore the sign of the kettle on my brown 
linen sack for the rest of the voyage. 

As we approached the mouth of the 
East Branch we passed two or three huts, 
the first sign of civilization after Hunt's, 
though we saw no road as yet. We heard 
a cowbell, and even saw an infant held up 
to a small square window to see us pass. 
On entering the West Branch at Nicke- 
tow, Polls remarked that it was all smooth 
water hence to Oldtown, and he threw 




Carrying round the Falls 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH i8i 

away his pole which was cut on the Um- 
bazookskus. 

We camped about two miles below 
Nicketow, covering with fresh twigs the 
withered bed of a former traveler, and 
feeling that we were now in a settled 
country, especially when in the evening 
we heard an ox sneeze in its wild pasture 
across the river. Wherever you land along 
the frequented part of the river you have 
not far to go to find these sites of tem- 
porary inns, the withered bed of flattened 
twigs, the charred sticks, and perhaps the 
tent-poles. Not long since, similar beds 
were spread along the Connecticut, the 
Hudson, and the Delaware, and longer 
still ago, by the Thames and Seine, and 
they now help to make the soil where 
private and public gardens, mansions, and 
palaces are. We could not get fir twigs 
for our bed here, and the spruce was 
harsh in comparison, having more twig 
in proportion to its leaf, but we improved 
it somewhat with hemlock. 



i82 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

After the regular supper we attempted 
to make a lily soup of the bulbs which I had 
brought along, for I wished to learn all I 
could before I got out of the woods. Fol- 
lowing the Indian's directions, I washed 
the bulbs carefully, minced some moose 
meat and some pork, salted and boiled all 
together, but we had not the patience to 
try the experiment fairly, for he said it 
must be boiled till the roots were com- 
pletely softened so as to thicken the soup 
like flour; but though we left it on all 
night, we found it dried to the kettle in 
the morning and not yet boiled to a flour. 
Perhaps the roots were not ripe enough, 
for they commonly gather them in the 
fall. The Indian's name for these bulbs 
was sheepnoc. 

He prepared to camp as usual between 
his moose-hide and the fire, but it begin- 
ning to rain suddenly he took refuge under 
the tent with us, and gave us a song before 
falling asleep. It rained hard in the night 
and spoiled another box of matches for 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 183 

us, which the Indian had left out, for he 
was very careless; but we had so much 
the better night for the rain, since it kept 
the mosquitoes down. 

Sunday, a cloudy and unpromising morn- 
ing. One of us observed to the Indian, 
"You did not stretch your moose-hide 
last night, did you, Mr. Polis ?" 

Whereat he replied in a tone of sur- 
prise, though perhaps not of ill humor: 
"What you ask me that question for? 
Suppose I stretch 'em, you see 'em. May 
be your way talking, may be all right, no 
Indian way." 

I had observed that he did not wish to 
answer the same question more than once, 
and was often silent when it was put 
again, as if he were moody. Not that he 
was incommunicative, for he frequently 
commenced a longwinded narrative of his 
own accord — repeated at length the tra- 
dition of some old battle, or some passage 
in the recent history of his tribe in which 
he had acted a prominent part, from time 



1 84 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

to time drawing a long breath, and resum- 
ing the thread of his tale, with the true 
story-teller's leisureliness. Especially after 
the day's work was over, and he had put 
himself in posture for the night, he would 
be unexpectedly sociable, and we would 
fall asleep before he got through. 

The Indian was quite sick this morning 
with the colic. I thought that he was the 
worse for the moose meat he had eaten. 

We reached the Mattawamkeag at half 
past eight in the morning, in the midst 
of a drizzling rain, and, after buying some 
sugar, set out again. 

The Indian growing much worse, we 
stopped in the north part of Lincoln to 
get some brandy for him, but, failing in 
this, an apothecary recommended Brand- 
reth's pills, which he refused to take be- 
cause he was not acquainted with them. 
He said, "Me doctor — first study my 
case, find out what ail 'em — then I know 
what to take." 
■ We stopped at mid-forenoon on an 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 185 

island and made him a dipper of tea. 
Here, too, we dined and did some washing 
and botanizing, while he lay on the bank. 
In the afternoon we went on a little far- 
ther. As a thunder-shower appeared to be 
coming up we stopped opposite a barn 
on the west bank. Here we were obliged 
to spend the rest of the day and night, 
on account of our patient, whose sickness 
did not abate. He lay groaning under his 
canoe on the bank, looking very woebe- 
gone. You would not have thought, if 
you had seen him lying about thus, that 
he was worth six thousand dollars and 
had been to Washington. It seemed to 
me that he made a greater ado about his 
sickness than a Yankee does, and was 
more alarmed about himself. We talked 
somewhat of leaving him with his people 
in Lincoln, — for that is one of their 
homes, — but he objected on account of 
the expense, saying, " Suppose me well 
in morning, you and I go Oldtown by 
noon.*' 



1 86 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

As we were taking our tea at twilight, 
while he lay groaning under his canoe, he 
asked me to get him a dipper of water. 
Taking the dipper in one hand, he seized 
his powderhorn with the other, and, pour- 
ing into it a charge or two of powder, 
stirred it up with his finger, and drank it 
off. This was all he took to-day after 
breakfast beside his tea. 

To save the trouble of pitching our 
tent, when we had secured our stores from 
wandering dogs, we camped in the soli- 
tary half-open barn near the bank, with 
the permission of the owner, lying on new- 
mown hay four feet deep. The fragrance 
of the hay, in which many ferns, etc., 
were mingled, was agreeable, though it 
was quite alive with grasshoppers which 
you could hear crawling through it. This 
served to graduate our approach to houses 
and feather beds. In the night some large 
bird, probably an owl, flitted through 
over our heads, and very early in the 
morning we were awakened by the twit- 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 187 

tering of swallows which had their nests 
there. 

We started early before breakfast, the 
Indian being considerably better, and soon 
glided by Lincoln, and stopped to break- 
fast two or three miles below this town. 

We frequently passed Indian islands 
with their small houses on them. The 
Penobscot Indians seem to be more social 
even than the whites. Ever and anon in 
the deepest wilderness of Maine you come 
to the log hut of a Yankee or Canada set- 
tler, but a Penobscot never takes up his 
residence in such a solitude. They are not 
even scattered about on their islands in the 
Penobscot, but gathered together on two 
or three, evidently for the sake of society. 
I saw one or two houses not now used by 
them, because, as our Indian said, they 
were too solitary. 

From time to time we met Indians in 
their canoes going up river. Our man did 
not commonly approach them, but only 
exchanged a few words with them at a 



i88 CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

distance. We took less notice of the scen- 
ery to-day, because we were in quite a 
settled country. The river became broad 
and sluggish, and we saw a blue heron 
winging its way slowly down the stream 
before us. 

The Sunkhaze, a short dead stream, 
comes in from the east two miles above 
Oldtown. Asking the meaning of this 
name, the Indian said, " Suppose you are 
going down Penobscot, just like we, and 
you see a canoe come out of bank and go 
along before you, but you no see 'em 
stream. That is Sunkhaze ^ 

He had previously complimented me on 
my paddling, saying that I paddled "just 
like anybody," giving me an Indian name 
which meant " great paddler." When off 
this stream he said to me, who sat in the 
bows, " Me teach you paddle." 

So, turning toward the shore, he got out, 
came forward, and placed my hands as he 
wished. He placed one of them quite out- 
side the boat, and the other parallel with 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 189 

the first, grasping the paddle near the end, 
not over the fiat extremity, and told me to 
slide it back and forth on the side of the 
canoe. This, I found, was a great improve- 
ment which I had not thought of, saving 
me the labor of lifting the paddle each 
time, and I wondered that he had not sug- 
gested it before. It is true, before our bag- 
gage was reduced we had been obliged to 
sit with our legs drawn up, and our knees 
above the side of the canoe, which would 
have prevented our paddling thus, or per- 
haps he was afraid of wearing out his 
canoe by constant friction on the side. 

I told him that I had been accustomed 
to sit in the stern, and lift my paddle at 
each stroke, getting a pry on the side each 
time, and I still paddled partly as if in the 
stern. He then wanted to see me paddle 
in the stern. So, changing paddles, for he 
had the longer and better one, and turning 
end for end, he sitting flat on the bottom 
and I on the crossbar, he began to paddle 
very hard, trying to turn the canoe, look- 



iQo CANOEING IN THE WILDERNESS 

ing over his shoulder and laughing, but, 
finding it in vain, he relaxed his efforts, 
though we still sped along a mile or two 
very swiftly. He said that he had no fault 
to find with my paddling in the stern, but 
I complained that he did not paddle ac- 
cording to his own directions in the bows. 

As we drew near to Oldtown I asked 
Polls if he was not glad to get home 
again ; but there was no relenting to his 
wildness, and he said, " It makes no dif- 
ference to me where I am." Such is the 
Indian's pretense always. 

We approached the Indian Island 
through the narrow strait called " Cook." 
He said : " I 'xpect we take in some wa- 
ter there, river so high — never see it so 
high at this season. Very rough water 
there ; swamp steamboat once. Don't you 
paddle till I tell you. Then you paddle 
right along." 

It was a very short rapid. When we 
were in the midst of it he shouted, " Pad- 
dle ! " and we shot through without taking 



ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH 191 

in a drop. Soon after the Indian houses 
came in sight. I could not at first tell my 
companion which of two or three large 
white ones was our guide's. He said it was 
the one with blinds. 

We landed opposite his door at about 
four in the afternoon, having come some 
forty miles this day. We stopped for an 
hour at his house. Mrs. P. wore a hat and 
had a silver brooch on her breast, but she 
was not introduced to us. The house was 
roomy and neat. A large new map of Old- 
town and the Indian Island hung on the 
wall, and a clock opposite to it. 

This was the last that I saw of Joe Polls. 
We took the last train, and reached Ban- 
gor that night. 



THE END 



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